AutoHotkey - great scripting tool!

About AutoHotkey (AHK)

You want to automate your actions? Sick of the ugly batch scripts?! Well, you have to try AutoHotkey, or better - some of its other flavors: AutoHotkey_L (AutoHotkey_L is a fork of the original AutoHotkey, more info some other post) or IronAHK (it's a .NET port of the original AutoHotkey, however introducing some new features).

AutoHotkey has proven itself to be very useful in everyday use, when using the keyboard is ten times faster and easier than using the mouse. Many people like such software, starting from the flame-war between VI vs. Emacs, lynx vs. links, Total Commander vs. Directory Opus, all of them which are great pieces of software and each one of them utilizing the keyboard to its full potential. However, no matter how great and useful a program can be, it will always have some flaws.. AutoHotkey to the rescue! :)

Key features:

Some of its features are:

- Easy handling of the keyboard keys and mouse clicks

- Not only keyboards and mice, you can have full support for USB hardware as well

- Easy to use GUI creator (something like Visual C#, Delphi 7, etc, but with less features)

- Built-in GUI creator which support GUI stealing :)

- Almost full-support of AutoIt2 script

- Great WinLIRC script, which can be a great start ;)

- Easy to learn syntax

- Useful help file (yes, you read that CORRECTLY), cool and plain examples

- Many, many more.. :)

Usage:

I have used AutoHotkey for quick hacks (a.k.a. hacking around a problem) and also for some more serious programs (not big projects, but useful full-features programs, hopefully bug-free). AutoHotkey supports DLL calls, which basically means that you can use almost every function provided by Win32 API, combining this with some great scripts: SKAN's List of Win32 CONSTANTS and Lexikos's StructParser, practically you are able to build a full-featured software in AutoHotkey in less time, with less efforts.

Compiling your scripts..

AutoHotkey also provides a compiler, so you can make your programs portable (you won't need an installed version of AutoHotkey to run a compiled script). The compiler can also the UPX packer, so the compiled EXEs' size is even smaller.

You can use a password for protecting your script from being decompiled in the future. However, this cannot be prevented if the user guesses the password (or knows it ;). Maybe you can try the Armadillo packer, it was not cracked (not a automated unpacker was written for it, however there were some tools which could greatly ease the process :).

Final words:

This is for now, in the future articles I would comment the main differences between AutoHotkey and AutoHotkey_L.