Tag: Associative Arrays

We had a great webinar on Arrays!  Here are links to the videos

• First hour video discussing below points
• Second hour where we took a deep dive trouble-shooting an attendee’s script

Benefits of Simple and Associative Arrays in AutoHotkey

• Speed – Objects are very fast!
• Code maintenance / easier to update
• Structured data
• Easier to read / understand
  • Dot notation (names) can be very easy to read
  • Automatically group “variables” in a meaningful structure / Nesting deeper levels
• Built-in functionality
• Iterating over keys / values
• Insert / Append to last
• Remove / Remove last item
• Count (Length)
• Set / assign value (Index/Key – Value pair)
• Retrieve / Lookup (Index/Key – Value pair)

Things to Remember with Simple and Associative Arrays in AutoHotkey

• Keys are not case sensitive The following results in one key-value pair: {ex:1,EX:2}
• Keys are unique (If you have duplicates, only the last one will be kept)
• Simple Arrays can not have “empty” spots
• Associative Arrays are not, necessarily, ordered in the way you’d expect (when iterate over can seem out of order)
• Simple arrays are sequential
• Simple Arrays can be considered Associative Arrays where the Index is the key
• You must declare the object before or during population
• To “nest” an object, you must declare the Parent and sub-objects first too!
• Although the same, Lexikos recommends using { } for Associative Array & [ ] for Simple Array
• You do not need to save the object to iterate over it
• Arrays are often returned from API calls in JSON
• While Simple and Associative Arrays in AutoHotkey take a bit of getting used to, in the long run, they are great time savers!

Resources for learning Simple and Associative Arrays in AutoHotkey

• Simple Arrays for Dummies– Video & Script from Joe Glines
• StackOverlfow – Jackie tutorial on Simple arrays
• Associative Array
• Creating an Array of Associative Arrays
• Creating an Associative Array of Associative Arrays
• Multilevel Associative Arrays

Featured script

Pasting clipboard to p.ahkscript.org– great for collaborating with others!

Additional Resources

During the webinar a few other scripts were mentioned.  Here are the links that were shared:

• Cap’n Odin offered this for handling long text
• Converting Arrays to Strings.  As an example Cap’n Odin for showing what is in an Array:

MsgBox, % ObjectToString({"AHK" : [1, 2, 3], "Joe" : ["http://the-automator.com/"], "Jackie" : {"URL" : "https://jszapp.com/"}})

ObjectToString(obj){
	if(!IsObject(obj)){
		return __IsNum(obj) ? obj : """" obj """"
	}
	bool := obj.Length()
	res .= bool ? "[" : "{"
	for key, value in obj {
		res .= (!bool ? """" key """ : "  : "") ObjectToString(value) ", "
	}
	return SubStr(res, 1, -2) (bool ? "]" : "}")
}

__IsNum(Num){
	if Num is Number
		return 1
	return 0
}