AutoIt or Autohotkey?

[allend66]

I'm looking to start to automate some of my computer work and wondered which would be a better language to learn, that of autohotkey or Autoit.

Comments and suggestions welcome...
Thx
D

 

[MilesAhead]

I'm looking to start to automate some of my computer work and wondered which would be a better language to learn, that of autohotkey or Autoit.

Comments and suggestions welcome...
Thx
D

If you are going to use Autohotkey I recommend Autohotkey_L

It has object and array support lacking in ahk basic.

If you do get AutoIt3 I recommend you also get the WinAPIEx UDF package. It's going to be included in the next release. If you're lazy you can wait until then and get the help all integrated. But there's no telling how long to the next AutoIt release. Bacially WinAPIEx has wrappers for many of the Windows API calls you would ordinarily have to call yourself using the DllCall().

The major differece is that ahk has better hotkey implementation especially for the hotkeys only being active in certain circumstances. AutoIt cannot duplicate that behavior smoothly.

AutoIt3 has a cleaner syntax. It's more like Basic with Select Case and Switch statement lacking in ahk.

It's worth it to learn both. One reason is that no matter how well ahk implements the hotkeys, it has no native command line interface. If you want to compile a real console application, it can't do it. AutoIt3 can.

I have some applications where I do the hotkey detection in ahk and the main program in AutoIt3 either by sending the hotkey from ahk or using message passing.

Like anything, it depends on exactly what you're trying to do.

 

[allend66]

Thanks, MilesAhead, I was hoping you'd reply (knowing you're a Autohotkey programmer).

Really, I want to automate routine things that I'm having trouble doing via a macro recorder (mouse and keys) program. For example, an interenet macro of loading Gmail, Yahoo mail, Facebook, SevenForums, etc & logging on to all these websites, or another example, open a database file (think .xlsx) and insert new rows at the top of the sheet and stock text in certain cells. I was getting along ok with Easy Macro Recorder, Pro version thanks to GiveAwayOfTheDay, but it is very tempramental, so wanted to write a script to remove all errors.

I'm in no rush. I'll wait and install them both and have a play around.
Thnx again.

 

[MilesAhead]

For sending keystrokes and mouse clicks they are comparable. I think AutoIt3 is a bit easier to learn due to the consistent syntax. ahk has more quirks, but is more powerful in some ways.

http://www.autohotkey.com/community/

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.php?

I do mainly ahk and autoit because I'm doing hotkey stuff right now. I was doing OOP (Object Pascal C++ etc.) and assembler back in the 90s. Just right now it's more fun to be lazy. On occasion I do something easy in C$ or C++. But I try not to work up a sweat as I'm not being paid except for the occasional donation. Doesn't pay the bills but the thought is nice.

 

[Camboni]

The two languages ​​have a similar syntax, but you should autoit I will I plan for a long time and I'm really good!

;Bye Camboni ;)
Msgbox(64,"Bye bye","This is a funny script!")