How do you auto highlight text based on space between words? Topic is solved

[Vaklev]

Hi guys, I am trying to make a macro to autohighlight words, copy and paste them in different fields, example data:

"George Mathew Coman <---- Mouse position starts here"

The data structure is based on 3 words, I have to input the 3 names of the person in different fields so I have a mousemove command:

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Mousegetpos, px,py
Send {lbutton down} ; holds left click
Mousemove -10,0,0,r ; moves the mouse 10 pixels to the left
Send {lbutton up} ; releases left click
Send {lcontrol down}c{lcontrol up}
Mousemove 75,100
Mouseclick left
Send {lcontrol down}v{lcontrol up}
Mousemove px,py

I have the mouse move from the very right to the left 10 pixels enough to cover "Coman", and then send the copied name to a field, but instead of assuming the word length is 10 pixels, since words vary in length, I want ahk to detect the space between "Coman" and "Mathew" and highlight to next word by moving again to the left but I want it to stop highlighting when it detects the space between "George" and "Mathew". Is there any way to make a script that automatically highlights and copies the words by stopping the highlight based on the spacing in between the words?

[Sir Teddy the First]

Hi,
if I understand your problem correctly, you could try the following:

• Instead of highlighting every word on its own, send {Control}{Shift}{Left} three times to highlight the three words

• Send {Control}c to copy them and do a StrSplit() on the clipboard (seperating by spaces)

• The resulting array will contain the three names

Does this solve your problem?

[Vaklev]

Wow that is the solution I was looking for! But I've never used String Split, can you please write out the code in how it would fit into mine im not sure where to place it but I will use the send left key to move to the next word which skips the space thank you so much!

[Sir Teddy the First]

Hi,
have a look at this example:

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MyCopiedText := "George Mathew Coman"
NameArray := StrSplit(MyCopiedText, A_Space)

Loop, % NameArray.Length()
{
    MsgBox % NameArray[A_Index]
}
return

StrSplit will return an array that is structured like this:

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ReturnedArray := Array("George", "Mathew", "Coman")

Each entry then has an index-number. "George" is 1, "Mathew" is 2 and so on.
You can iterate over this array using a loop (like in my example) or a For-Loop.

Or you just access the three names with NameArray[1], NameArray[2], NameArray[3].
That depends on how you want to process this information further.

[Vaklev]

Hi,
have a look at this example:

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MyCopiedText := "George Mathew Coman"
NameArray := StrSplit(MyCopiedText, A_Space)

Loop, % NameArray.Length()
{
    MsgBox % NameArray[A_Index]
}
return

StrSplit will return an array that is structured like this:

Code: Select all

ReturnedArray := Array("George", "Mathew", "Coman")

Each entry then has an index-number. "George" is 1, "Mathew" is 2 and so on.
You can iterate over this array using a loop (like in my example) or a For-Loop.

Or you just access the three names with NameArray[1], NameArray[2], NameArray[3].
That depends on how you want to process this information further.

Very intresting, however the data of the names will always be different, sometimes I even have as many as 6 names! So instead of directly quoting the names in the code can we do:
MyCopiedText := "clipboard"

or how exactly would you approach based on the amount of words in the clipboard always being a different variable

[Sir Teddy the First]

Hi,
this was just an example to demonstrate how to use StrSplit.
In your code you will have

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Send, {Control}{Shift}{Left}
Send,{Control down}c{Control up}

before that, so, as you stated correctly, you will have to change that to

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MyCopiedText := Clipboard ; without quotation marks because it is a variable and not plain text

If there are more than 3 names you might have to make a few changes:

• If they are all in the same line, you could try {Control}{Shift}{Up} after having placed the curser behind the last name, this will hightlight the whole line to the left

• After you used StrSplit() you can retrieve the exact number of names via NameArray.Length()

This should work.
If the names are arranged differently you might have to post another example.