Wed
03
Aug 2011

I recently code in C - an ancient language with no support for namespaces. To code a bigger system and not create name conflicts, prefixes for all public identifiers must be used. But they not only make the code less readable, but also take lots of time to type. I thought that at least the second issue can be minimized by setting up some macro that would insert predefined text (like "rendering_"), whenever I press a hotkey button (like Pause/Break).

I couldn't find such feature in my Visual C++ 2010 Express, so I decided to look for some general tool for Windows that can trigger a script when a hotkey is pressed. I found AutoHotkey - a free application with its own scripting language that claims to be successor of AutoIt, which I used some time ago. After reading some documentation, I coded following script:

Pause::
SetKeyDelay -1
send rendering_
return

+Pause::
SetKeyDelay -1
send RENDERING_
return

If you have AutoHotkey installed, just save this code to a file, give it "ahk" extension and double-click to run it. Program will create a system tray icon for this script indicating that it's running in the background. From now on you can just press Pause key to insert text "rendering_" to whatever input control you are focused, or Shift+Pause to insert "RENDERING_". It really speeds up coding in C :)

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