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A Beginners Guide to Autohotkey

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

This book is an introduction to AutoHotKey.

🎨 Impressions

I did a little work on making AutoHotKey commands, which I shared in my dotfiles. It is based on my Karabiner config for Mac, with some amendments and changes. For example, having a quick search bar instead of Alfred See Tools for a discussion on AutoHotkey as well. I thought my notes on the book were a bit simple, but I found the book interesting and nice to read. I can recommend it.

✍️ My Top Quotes

  • In programming, spelling is called syntax. A syntax error is a spelling error.

  • StringUpper and StringLower are commands built into AutoHotkey. A great deal of the power of AutoHotkey comes from these commands.

  • Send %Clipboard% The percent signs (%) surrounding the variable Clipboard tells AutoHotkey to use the contents of the Windows Clipboard.

  • The last line is the Return command which indicates the end of the routine or snippet of code and tells AutoHotkey to "return" to the previous place in the script.

  • Whenever a g-label option (g for gosub) is used when adding a GUI control, AutoHotkey looks for the associated label (subroutine) by the same name (with a colon at the end, but without the g in front—e.g. LaunchGoogle:).

  • Third Edition Windows Tip: In Windows Explorer hold down the right mouse button while dragging a file or folder to a new location. When the cursor is in the target folder, release the right mouse button and a menu of options will pop open: Copy here; Move here; Create shortcuts here; and Cancel.

  • AutoHotkey has built-in commands for moving files (FileMove), copying files (FileCopy), moving folders (FileMoveDir), and copying folders (FileCopyDir).