Help with a multiple text replacement script

Hi Nora,

I'll start with some suggestions to your second question about how to better implement the search and replacement items:

Separating search and replacement parts by a tab is smart, but you don't need to put these into your script. It is way easier to maintain a simple text file where you add them and then read that text file into a variable like this:

FileRead, vList, vListFile.txt

In order to run your search and replace, just use a simple loop:

Send, ^a
Send, ^c
Loop, Parse, vList, `r, `n
{
    oTemp := StrSplit(A_LoopField, "`t")
    FixString := StrReplace(FixString, oTemp.1, oTemp.2)
}
SendInput, %FixString%

As for the tag question, I need to look a bit deeper into this, but I fear it won't be easy without (again) the help of Studio APIs.

Kind regards,
Raphaël

By the way, do you know this Studio app, TermInjector? I haven't played around with it for a very long time, but depending on what the exact purpose of your script is, the app might also do the trick natively, and then  tags should be fine.

1) If you don't provide the complete path of the file in the script, but only its name, then it needs to be in the same folder as the script, otherwise wherever you want:

• FileRead, vList, vListFile.txt → the file "vListFile.txt" must be in the same folder as the script
• FileRead, vList, C:\Users\ndia\Documents\vListFile.txt → the file is stored in the folder "My Documents"

If you move the file later on, then you have to update the file location accordingly in your script.

2) That is up to you too, since you define the separator yourself in the script:

• StrSplit(A_LoopField, A_Tab) → a tab is used, but you could replace that with a pipe character or whatever you like, both here and in the file

Edit: typos

Hi Nora,

Since you use ClipboardAll at the start of your script, you know that it is different from Clipboard: ClipboardAll is binary, while Clipboard is just text.

See https://autohotkey.com/docs/misc/Clipboard.htm

When you use "FixString := Clipboard" in your script, you have already reduced your string to text, i.e. the tags are gone.

The AutoHotKey webpage above indicates that "altering a binary-clipboard variable (by means such as StringReplace) will revert it to a normal variable, resulting in the loss of its clipboard data", so even if you use "FixString := ClipboardAll", subsequent StringReplace commands would reduce FixString to text.

The webpage also states that  "binary-clipboard variables may be passed to functions by value (formerly they only worked ByRef)", so if you could figure out the binary format used you might be able to write your own routine to make changes to the clipboard data, but I suspect it wouldn't be all that easy.

I have never tried to deal with this binary data, but maybe one of the AutoHotKey experts has some experience in this area ...

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Hi Nora,

About the special characters ñ and á, I had a similar problem when I processed strings in a Dragon command.

The problem occurred because the string was being converted from Unicode to ASCII.

I was using the Windows registry to pass strings between Dragon commands. Unfortunately strings in the Windows registry are ASCII only, so when another command retrieved the string the special characters had been converted to regular characters without the accents.

I had to write a more complicated interface that converted each Unicode character in the string into three permissible "ASCII characters" (excluding ASCII zero, which is used as the terminating byte for the registry string) and then reversed the conversion when the string was retrieved.

Maybe a similar Unicode to ASCII conversion is happening somewhere in your situation.

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Hi Nora,

I just noticed that you are using a text file. (Sorry, I am not following all the details of what you are doing...)

Are you saving strings to a text file and then retrieving them?

If so, maybe check the encoding of the text file.

Check by opening the file, and then opening the "Save As" dialog (File->Save As).

At the bottom of the dialog box you will see a drop-down list for "Encoding:"

I think "ANSI" is the default. Try changing it to "Unicode" and see whether this helps.

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Good morning, Nora!

Here we go:

1. When you use SendInput, %FixString%, AHK sends the content of the variable directly to the currently active control in the active window, so there is no need to first copy the content of the variable to the clipboard and then the clipboard content to Studio by sending [Ctrl]+[ V ].
   It is even possible to send the content of a variable directly to a control that is in a non-active window via the command ControlSend, but in the case of Studio, this wouldn't work too well because of the changing control names.
   In principle, SendInput, %FixString% should paste the corrected string back into the target segment, overwriting the existing target since it would still be selected by the initial Send, ^a command. If you add a Send, ^v after that, it is normal that the original unmodified target gets also pasted since the clipboard still contains only the unmodified target from the command Send, ^c.
2. As already pointed out by Jesus, if you need to support special characters like accents, diacritic marks or other alphabets like Cyrillic or Greek, both the AHK script and any external file need to be in Unicode (UTF-8), otherwise you risk encountering corrupted characters. Advanced text editors like Notepad++ usually use UTF-8 as the default file encoding, but the standard Windows Notepad uses ANSI.
3. Since we are not talking about a CSV file, the only character that would need to be escaped or that might cause trouble would be the tab character itself since it is used as a delimiter. All other characters should be handled correctly when added literally.

Don't hesitate to get back to me if anything is still unclear ;-)

Have a great day!

Raphaël