AutoHotkey Community

[AnAHKUser]

Hi everyone,

I have been using Autohotkey for a few months now, and are starting to learn a few things about the scripting language.
It’s quite easy to learn because of an amazing documentation and a good forum. THANK YOU!

To me Autohotkey seems to be a powerful programming language that have few boundaries.
I want to ask you experienced AHK users what kind of limitations you see, what about performance issues etc. on BIG scripts.

Can Autohotkey stand up against Python, Perl, etc ?

AutoHotkey seems to be so much more than Automation and hotkeys. Name is quite misleading.

To the makers of Autohotkey: Thank you SO much for providing a GREAT tool. Where is the donate button ?!? Don't stop developing!

[Icarus]

I can tell you this.

To me AHK is a life saver.
I hate those fancy development environments (the "Studios") and all the cryptic documentation that you have to dig up on most other languages.

I like scripting, and AHK is a scripting language, that provides as you already know, some excellent features also for applications that require GUI.

I started AHK when I needed a "batch with GUI" but since then I have coded some impressive applications.

I never coded in Python, but I did in Perl and I dont feel comfortable comparing the two. At least at the time that I coded in Perl, there was no easy way to do GUI stuff, so it did not fit the bill for me on this regard.

Also, one thing that AHK has and Perl is not designed to, is all the intensive manipulations that AHK lets you do on OS related stuff (mouse, windows, keyboard mappings etc) Afaik, you have to work really hard to make it possible with Perl and probably with Python.

I can tell you that these are the things that annoy me the most, although I have learned to live with them:

1. The fact that many functions create and require global variables is terrible in big scripts. All the StringSplits, RegExMatch token variables, and GUI variables.
   
2. With big scripts, I almost always bump into issues that do not exist in small scripts - usually some weird things happen, probably because of all the memory management in AHK, and all the globalization. For example, I find some weird bugs that are fixed when I just change the name of the variable. Unfortunately, I am never able to reproduce it in smaller scripts, so unable to report it on the spot.
   
3. The lack of arrays and records is something I miss. I know AHK is not designed to replace object oriented languages, but a "struct" where you can store different variables in one variable is missing (i.e. MyVar.FirstName, MyVar.LastName and both are just represented by MyVar)
   
4. There are some GUI quirks that I find here and there, specifically with the Picture control and the Progress bar control, where they get messed up on repainting (see my RPG utility that was created with AHK, it uses a lot of progress bars...)
   

But all in all, I join you in thanking the creators - it caused a revolution in my life. No kidding.

[SKAN]

[AnAHKUser]

Thank you for the good answer Icarus

And that donate link worked fine, can be recomended to others as well

[SKAN]

[Guest]

[Icarus]

[tinku99]

My working script is over 4000 lines, using lots of #includes...
its no problem.

variables intended to be local becoming global is not an issue... you can just set them to null before using short local type variables...

functions have local variables anyways... so you can convert from subroutines to functions as it becomes necessary.

if you really run into problems you can have ahk call other ahk scripts...

[SpiderGames]

The only program i use that i like better than AHK is C++ but it's like $2000 for the program. I use C++ in School.
_________________

Xfire: SpiderGames77

[evan]

? C++ cost money?
i use devC++ for quite a long time and its free