AutoHotkey Community

I would like to create a loop for holding a key which simulates pressing "a" at the start of the loop and then repeatedly every 5 seconds while it simultaneously simulates the pressing of "b" every 2 seconds.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Pharco, welcome to the forum.

It may not seem like it, but you description is kinda vague.
Can you be more explicit?


btw:
Have you worked through the tutorial
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/Tutorial.htm

Thanks for responding so quickly. Yes, I have read through the tutorial and I can manage to write a loop but I can't seem to get a second loop within it going.

What I want to do is create a script which sends the key "a" every 5 seconds and the key "b" every 2 seconds. Right now I'm stuck at my scripts sending either "a" every 5 seconds or "b" every 2 seconds.

$g::
while GetKeyState("g","P")
{
send {a 1}
sleep 5000
}
return

while GetKeyState("g","P")
{
send {b 1}
sleep 2000
}
return

Doesn't work and creating a second $g:: gives an error.

Thanks, this helped me out a lot.

do you understand what you did wrong?
Hint: it has to do with the return lines...

The whole structure of the script has changed.
Your hint is misleading.

I think I tried every possible combination of "return" in my script and it never worked

well, it illuminated to me what the problem was.
What would your hint be?



You had a return between the first and second whiles, that's why the second would never fire. The solution split it up between several sections (subroutines) and called them in the whiles instead.

Gogo's script is fundamentally different than the script you posted.

The difference is the use of multiple threads http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/misc/Threads.htm

Here's an analogy to hopefully explain:
In your script, you have one "worker" doing every thing sequentially
There is no chance for the worker to "send {b 1}" because the while loop (and everything in between) won't allow for it.

If you have wanted to send a & b at the same time, they could have been in the same loop. But that isn't what you wanted.

In Gogo's script, there is a supervisor with two employees.
These two employees are special and are controlled by "SetTimer" instructions.
One of them is told "sleep, 5000" and "send a" and repeat ... forever

Meanwhile, the supervisor waits for the "g" key to release.
When the key is is released, the supervisor says, "finish your sleep, and your send, and then stop what you are doing".


This is a reasonably correct analogy. It is not perfect, because AHk is not multi-threaded.
The 3 workers are actually played by just one "actor" who keeps switching between the jobs.