AutoHotkey - Joel Lipman .Com

AutoHotkey: Get Media Information and Display

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 07 August 2020; Hits: 4538

Applies To:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional v6.1.7601 32-bit
AutoHotkey v1.1.33.02

What?
This is a copied article just to store a permanent reference for if I ever need to build an app similar to the file explorer in the Microsoft Windows OS.

Why?
I had an app for use in MS Windows 7 to display the properties of sound files though this is also applicable to media files in general.

How?
So first I'm going to list a function I use called "Filexpro()", then list some examples of usage. And in the second-to-last section, I'll quickly convert a 100 nanoseconds unit to display Hours : Minutes : Seconds.

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 08 July 2020; Hits: 5077

Applies to:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional - Service Pack 1
AutoHotkey v1.1.33.02

What?
So this is the documentation for a snippet of code that will list files of a directory using an AutoHotkey GUI and display what it will name them. The app needs to rename files but append an incremented count if the name of a file already exists. The original file needs to keep its original name.

What I have

copy raw

EDIT 0_00 0_30 My File 1 00_00 00_30.txt
edIT 0_00 0_31 My File 2 00_00 00_30.txt
eDIT 0_00 0_30 My File 3 00_00 00_31.wav
My File 3.wav
My File 3 - Copy.wav

EDIT 0_00 0_30 My File 1 00_00 00_30.txt
edIT 0_00 0_31 My File 2 00_00 00_30.txt
eDIT 0_00 0_30 My File 3 00_00 00_31.wav
My File 3.wav
My File 3 - Copy.wav

What I want

copy raw

My File 1.txt
My File 2.txt
My File 3 (2).wav
My File 3.wav
My File 3 (3).wav

My File 1.txt
My File 2.txt
My File 3 (2).wav
My File 3.wav
My File 3 (3).wav

How?
So if you copy the following code into an AutoHotkey file and execute it, it will popup an app with 3 buttons: 1st to generate or populate a list of the files in the script directory, the 2nd to do the actual renaming. A text field is provided (defaults to A_ScriptDir) to specify what folder to scan for files. The 3rd button simply reloads the app (used mostly for testing/development). Lastly, a listview that has 2 columns: the 1st lists the files in that directory, the 2nd displays the new filenames of the files.

Category: AutoHotkey :: Article: 723

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 07 January 2020; Hits: 3647

Applies To:

MS Windows 10 Pro v10.0.18362 Build 18362 (64-bit)
Google Chrome Browser v79.0.3945.88 (Official Build) (64-bit)
AutoHotkey v1.1.30.01

What?
This is an article to create a standalone application which lists all the Google Chrome Profiles on your Windows 10 workstation in alphabetical order.

Why?
This program will be redundant if Google ever update their Chrome browser to list the multiple profiles in alphabetical order like it used to be... but to date they have not. So I made a program that lists the profiles in alphabetical order and can be double-clicked to open the Chrome browser with that profile.

How?
So you will need to be able to run AutoHotkey or create executables from an AHK file.

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 18 July 2019; Hits: 5519

Applies to:

Microsoft Windows 10
AutoHotkey 1.1.30

What?
Yay for Microsoft Windows 10 in joining the rest of the Operating Systems in implementing multiple desktops. So if you have a Mac or Linux system, you will know of a feature where you can have another virtual desktop on your device.

For those that don't know it, the feature is similar to mobile phones where you swipe left/right to reveal another screen of app icons. The same can be done to the desktop versions with open applications instead of just their icons.

Why?
MS Windows 10 has made a major step but when you close down your PC and log back in, all the applications are grouped into the one desktop. If you have a multiple monitor setup (ie. more than 1 monitor), then MS Windows will almost remember which apps were open on which screen but always on Desktop 1.

In addition, there are some developments on AutoHotkey forums where people are having difficulties opening an app on their second monitor. So I thought I'd jot down some notes here on how I've achieved this across multiple monitors... and now multiple desktops.

How?
The following example is assuming you have 3 monitors and 3 desktops. I'm going to cover the basic code to: 1) get all monitors, 2) open an app on a specified monitor, 3) switch to another desktop.

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 28 January 2019; Hits: 3686

What?
So I needed to clear space on a workstation's C drive. There are other programs about and even some built-in to MS Windows that could potentially be used.

This is a quick article on how to write an AutoHotkey program to simply return the folders in the drive and display the size of all the files/folders contained within.

How?
So I'll be putting this program for download from the download section of this website but I don't expect anyone to trust an executable EXE so here's the code of what it's doing which you can copy and paste to an AutoHotkey script:

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 17 July 2014; Hits: 9026

Applies to:

Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
AutoHotkey (see code for AHK version)

What?
Someone suggested an app that counts the days I have left serving my notice. I thought I'd go one better and have it calculate to the nearest second. I call this latest app "byeBU" and this is version 0.4 Beta (unofficial app).

Why?
Something to do...

How?

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 04 June 2013; Hits: 14032

What?
So this is an article to list methods of retrieving the number of files in a folder/directory.

Why?
Why can't we just use a loop and file pattern native to the Autohotkey programming language:

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UserFolder:="C:"
-- UserFolder := RegExReplace( MyInputField, "\\$")  ; gets rid of trailing slash if required

-- Method #1
count := 0
Loop, %UserFolder%\*.*, 0, 1 
  count++

-- note for future use:
; if A_LoopFileAttrib contains H,R,S
;	continue

UserFolder:="C:"
-- UserFolder := RegExReplace( MyInputField, "\\$") ; gets rid of trailing slash if required
-- Method #1
count := 0
Loop, %UserFolder%\*.*, 0, 1
count++
-- note for future use:
; if A_LoopFileAttrib contains H,R,S
; continue

This works fine at home on your local host on a local drive. Try using this over a networked drive and more time will be spent counting the files then the actual processing (or whatever your script is trying to do).

Category: AutoHotkey :: Article: 512

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 29 September 2011; Hits: 21535

Well yes you could just use the Unicode version of Autohotkey. If you're looking for some up and down arrows which is all I wanted, then you don't have to use Unicode and you can use the Chr() function:

copy raw

msgbox % Chr(24) ; upwards arrow
msgbox % Chr(25) ; downwards arrow, unstable

msgbox % Chr(24) ; upwards arrow
msgbox % Chr(25) ; downwards arrow, unstable

Category: AutoHotkey :: Article: 389

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 27 September 2011; Hits: 14331

Ok so there are more fun things to do out there. If you're the type of AutoHotkey programmer that doesn't like having to use the command prompt to write to an extra text file which your program has to read, then this is for you. DllCall will usually run contained in the program and can be hidden from the end-user.

The one to rule them all:
This is a function I pulled from the Autohotkey forums submitted by SKAN which lists all the functions for a specified Dynamic Link Library (DLL) along with an inputbox for convenience:

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 27 September 2011; Hits: 10733

These are for autohotkey and in AHK code. Taken from Autohotkey forums topic 1878:

From Hexadecimal to RGB
From RGB to Hexadecimal
Check for a valid hexadecimal value

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 20 September 2011; Hits: 13836

As you can tell these are my messed up functions that convert dates into seconds and vice-versa. They're a little disorganised but they're the ones I copy and paste to my scripts then modify.

In it's straightforward form

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FormatTime( TimeString, Format )
{
     FormatTime, FormattedTime , TimeString, %Format% 
     return Formattedtime
}

FormatTime( TimeString, Format )
{
FormatTime, FormattedTime , TimeString, %Format%
return Formattedtime
}

Category: AutoHotkey :: Article: 384

: Joel Lipman; AutoHotkey; 20 September 2011; Hits: 14470

Just a quick note as I use this function in various scripts. This adds the 1000th separator comma:

    	FormatAddCommas(val) {
    		Result:=val
    		StringLen, OutputVar, Result
    		NumLoop := (OutputVar // 3)
    		DNum = 3
    		Loop, % (NumLoop+1)
    		{
    		   StringRight,Digit,Result,%DNum%
    		   StringReplace, Result, Result, %Digit%,`,%Digit%
    		   DNum += 4
    		}
    		StringLen, OutputVar, Result
    		Loop, %OutputVar%
    		{
    			FirstChar:=Substr(Result, 1, 1)
    			IfEqual, FirstChar, `,
    			{
    				Result:=Substr(Result, 2)
    			} else {
    				break
    			}
    		}
    		Return Result
    	}