Copy-and-Paste

AutoHotkey Tip of the Week: Instant Upper Case, Lower Case, and Initial Cap Text—September 2, 2019

Jack Dunning AutoHotkey, Beginning, Clipboard Routine, Forcing Expressions, Format() Function, Hotkeys, Windows Clipboard, Windows scripting , , , , , , ,

Tips: Quick Hotkeys for Changing Text To/From Capital Letters and How to Initial Cap Everything, Plus, How to Write Robust Clipboard Routines

Light Bulb!This week I offer two useful tips: one for editing text and the other for improving your AutoHotkey scripts.

When reviewing my books, I look for those tips which I use all the time. I’ve found that I developed some scripts primarily for demonstration purposes and rarely ever use them again. Yet, I have a few which I use so much that I feel like they have become a part of my Windows system.

AHKNewCover200In this case, while perusing my Beginner’s Guide to AutoHotkey, I noticed in “Chapter Four: Hotkeys and Text Editing with Windows Clipboard” the Hotkeys for changing selected portions of text into all capital letters, all lowercase letters, or initial cap every word in the section. I originally wrote these Hotkeys when I edited articles submitted by freelance writers.

Some writers have a penchant for placing their article headlines and topic subheadings in all uppercase letters. By creating a Hotkey for converting the entire line to Title Mode (initial capital letter for each word), I quickly solved the retyping problem:
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Finding UK Postal Codes (AutoHotkey RegEx Tips Part 2)

Jack Dunning AutoHotkey, Parsing Data, Regular Expressions (RegEx), Windows Clipboard, Windows scripting , , ,

By Comparison, UK Postal Codes Offer a Greater Challenge Than US Zip Codes When Writing Regular Expressions (RegEx)

UKPostalCode
Note that a single space appears between “Birmingham” and the “B5 5QD” postal code. Without special recognition of the UK postal codes, the MultiPaste.ahk script won’t create a separate paste item.

In the previous blog (“Finding US Zip Codes (AutoHotkey RegEx Tips Part 1)“), I began this mini-tutorial series on AutoHotkey Regular Expressions (RegEx) with a technique for parsing US zip codes from street addresses. For the MultiPaste.ahk script to work best (“Parsing and Pasting One-Line Street Addresses (AutoHotkey Multi-Paste Trick)“), I needed any zip code to appear as a separate paste item in the MultiPaste MsgBox. The parsing problem occurs because most one-line address formats only use as a delimiter the space character (no comma or newline) between the state and zip code. The same holds true for UK postal codes.

Cover 200Last time, I pointed out how the string functions—InStr() and StrReplace()—require exact search characters while the Regular Expressions functions—RegExMatch() and RegExReplace()—can use a variety of wild cards to represent characters. In fact, the various different ways to express wild cards cause a degree of confusion. In this blog, I introduce the \w alphanumeric wild card and the question mark modifier (?) to create optional matches. Continue reading →

Finding US Zip Codes (AutoHotkey RegEx Tips Part 1)

Jack Dunning AutoHotkey, Beginning, Parsing Data, Regular Expressions (RegEx), Windows scripting , , ,

Powerful Regular Expressions (RegEx) Perform Minor Computing Miracles—This Part 1 Uses Extracting US Zip Codes from Street Addresses to Introduce Regular Expressions as Merely a Set of Confusing Wildcards

In my last blog, “Parsing and Pasting One-Line Street Addresses (AutoHotkey Multi-Paste Trick)“, I added one-line street addresses to my MultiPaste.ahk script. That short AutoHotkey app uses a few Regular Expressions (RegEx) to identify and isolate key information:

  1. Cover 200Five-digit US zipcodes.
  2. UK postal codes.
  3. Remove excess tab characters in the results.
  4. Identify date formats.

I used RegEx functions for these problems because the basic string functions just didn’t offer the power needed without convoluted coding. RegEx provides fairly simple solutions (although possibly confounding to the neophyte).

Continue reading →

Parsing and Pasting One-Line Street Addresses (AutoHotkey Multi-Paste Trick)

Jack Dunning AutoHotkey, Clipboard Routine, Input Command (Hotstrings), Parsing Data, Regular Expressions (RegEx), Windows Clipboard, Windows scripting, Windows Utilities , , , ,

Another Pet Peeve…the Windows Copy-and-Paste Doesn’t Make It Easy to Insert Street Addresses and Postal Codes into Forms

I’ve noticed that many applications and Web pages list street addresses on just one line:

Jack Dunning, 1234 Main Street, Any Town, MI  90571

This makes sense and saves space when compared to a three or four-line address listing:

Jack Dunning
1234 Main Street
Any Town, MI  90571

However, when using the Windows Clipboard for a copy-and-paste operation, a person still needs to jump between the two windows a number of times—unless he or she uses a parse-and-paste tool such as MultiPaste.ahk. Continue reading →