AutoHotkey Community

Hi,

I'd like to create a script that does something like so:

ScriptToRunProgram contains


Called this way: (Note: these scripts are called by another application one after the other and I don't have control over having it wait at this level)

ScriptToRunProgram
ScriptToRunProgram
ScriptToRunProgram
...

I want the 2nd call to ScriptToRunProgram to wait until the 1st program is exited. I'd like the 3rd call to wait until the 2nd is done (however I'd take any order, as long as a single instance of the program is active at one time).

Any ideas on how to approach this to ensure that only one copy of SomeProgram.exe is loaded at a time? I can see issues with multiple scripts all testing at the same time and deciding to run. I tried a few things with Process that didn't work.

The actual application is for a source control app, executing a diff on an entire changelist, and only being presented with one file diff at a time instead of all trying to load at once. I'm pretty sure many years ago a co-worker wrote a batch file that did something like this, but that is lost to me.

You can use process, exist, or IfWinExist

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Autofire, AutoClick, Toggle, Spam • Window Control Tools
Recommended: AutoHotkey_L

I mentioned I tried to get Process to work. I think there is overhead to starting up a new program that causes this to not work.

I've made a few changes:


Your while loop seemed really strange. I hope this helps.

Edit: typo in red

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Autofire, AutoClick, Toggle, Spam • Window Control Tools
Recommended: AutoHotkey_L

This doesn't work. Multiple copies still execute. I'd already tried WaitClose, didn't try the name modification. Thanks for the suggestion though. Seems like I need something like a mutex, a simulated mutex on a temporary file, or some interprocess communication.

Really now. That's incredibly strange. I'm going to try it with notepad.exe and come back.

Edit: the following code is tested and runs only one instance of Notepad.exe at a time. I'm beginning to think there's a typo in your script, since this works fine

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Autofire, AutoClick, Toggle, Spam • Window Control Tools
Recommended: AutoHotkey_L

That works ok if you have a single instance of the script running. If you run multiple copies of the script the it will allow several copies of notepad to be in memory at once. Sometimes it will allow just one, it's just kind of random due to the nature of processing multiple threads.

The problem is that X numbers of the scripts can execute at once and I only want one of those to 'run' a notepad (winmerge).