jQuery Forum

jquertil, I am the least qualified person to answer you, but am
disappointed that you haven't received any replies to either of your
posts, so am bumping you up!
I have this difficulty all the time -- and you're clearly more
advanced than me. I *think* you need to create a namespace - which I
**think** means naming your function. If there is any simple
documentation about this, I haven't found it yet!
Good luck - and, if you don't get a reply but find the answer anyway,
please post it back!!
Cherry :)

What you have coded doesn't work because the $.get call is *asynchronous*.   When you call $.get, $.post, $.ajax or any async function you pass a callback function.  The actual $.get call returns immediately, but the results from the server aren't passed to your callback method until the server responds.  That may take a few hundred milliseconds or it may be many seconds.  You have no control over when the response is received so you need to structure your code with that in mind. 

thanks cherry for bumping this!
and THANKS MIKE for pointing out the async aspect of $.get()
I rewrote my function and now it works!
For the benefit of others, there are soem add'l comments
loadXML2array: function(url,variable) { // is an extension function,
see original post above
return this.each(function() { // a weird jquery thing - you
gotta iterate through the object and it will return the variable below
var data = $.ajax({ // cannot use get because it doesnt
allow async:false - see mike's answer above
             type: "GET",
             url: "echo.php?xml=datatable1",
             async: false, // important -- if this is true, the return value
will be undefined. see mikes post above
             success: function(xml) {
                 objectArray = new Array(); // im setting up an array to hold
objects in
                 $(xml).find('row').each(function(i){ // im looking for specific
tags
                     rowObj = new Object(); // making an object
                     rowObj.col1 = $(this).children('col_1').text(); // adding some
attributes to the object
                     rowObj.col2 = $(this).children('col_2').text();
                     rowObj.col3 = $(this).children('col_3').text();
                     objectArray.push(rowObj); // storing object in the array
                });
             } // nomally I would put "return objectArray" here but the
"return this.each()..." business above takes care of it. I dont know
why
            })
});
}