Intermittent Hotstring Error - First Letter of Hotstring Not replaced Topic is solved

[pptx]

I occasionally run into an issue with hotstrings whereby the first letter is not replaced. Here is an example of a hotstring that occasionally has this issue.

:O*:ytt!:: ;;Youtube Search Hotstring
{
tempstore=%clipboard%
sleep 100
clipboard:="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query="
send ^v
sleep 100
clipboard=%tempstore%
}
return

99% of the time, the above will replace "ytt!" with "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=". However, sometimes the output is "yhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=".

I mainly use hotstrings in my browser and have only noticed this issue there. I have seen the issue in both firefox and chrome. It seems to happen when I have a lot of tabs open.

Additional information:
- Let's say I have a chrome window open with 200 tabs and I notice this hotstring replacement issue. If I open a second chrome window with one tab the hotstring will work fine there, but the issue will persist in the original window with 200 tabs.

Yes, I know that the solution is to have better control of the tabs that I have open. But does anyone understand why this issue happens in the first place? Any help is greatly appreciated as this has been bugging me for quite some time.

[Helgef]

The browser might do highlighted suggestions as you type, hence, one backspace is deleting the highlighted suggestion instead of the trigger string. Cheers.

[pptx]

Thanks for the reply. Interesting theory about the highlighted suggestion in the browser url. I changed "ytt!" to "you!" in the hotstring above to see if highlighted suggestions have any effect and it appears they do not. As I start to type "you!" in the browser url, highlighted suggestions appear for youtube.com, but in the end the hotstring functions successfully and all characters outside of the highlighting are also replaced.

I suppose adding a backspace to the hotstring as shown below would solve this issue, but I'm still curious as to why this behavior occurs in the first place. Any ideas? Has anyone else experienced this behavior?
:O*:ytt!:: ;;Youtube Search Hotstring
{
tempstore=%clipboard%
sleep 100
clipboard:="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query="
send {Backspace}
send ^v
sleep 100
clipboard=%tempstore%
}
return

[KuroiLight]

try

Code: Select all

{
	tempstore=%clipboard%
	sleep 100
	clipboard:="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query="
	send ^a
	send ^v
	sleep 100
	clipboard=%tempstore%
}

depending on your browser you can also just add a search keyword to it, e.g. in firefox you can right click a search box and click add keyword for this search.

[pptx]

Thanks for the suggestion KuroiLight. That will work just fine. I am still curious as to why this behavior occurs in the first place - any ideas?
Helgef, I replied to your comment, but the reply hasn't been approved yet as I'm a new member. In case the reply has somehow gotten lost, I did a little test to see if highlighted suggestions would affect the hotstring replacement behavior and it didn't seem to have any effect. I changed "ytt!" to "you!", as this reliably brings up the highlighted suggestion of youtube.com. In the end everything was replaced, included the non-highlighted characters. Thanks for the suggestion.

[KuroiLight]

Its likely because your browser is slowing down, trying to autocomplete or something and not highlighting the text properly.

[pptx]

Yes, definitely agree that it likely has to do with the browser consuming a lot of resources. Was hoping there might be some setting (in either chrome or ahk) to prevent this. Anyway, your suggestion works fine and if I don't receive better suggestions within a few days, I'll mark your answer as accepted. Thanks, again.