What does the ampersand mean in a Send command?

[tfabris]

I had an old AutoIt script that I'm working on repurposing now for a new script. Back in the old days, it would send certain keystrokes to a commercial application. Here is a snippet:

Send("{ALTDOWN}")
   Send("&t")
   Send("&d")
   Send("&m")
   Send("{ALTUP}")
   Sleep(500)

Here's another snippet:

Send("{CTRLDOWN}")
   Send("&k")
   Send("{CTRLUP}")
   Sleep(500)

Clearly, the former is opening up the main menu with the ALT key and pressing ALT-t, d, m to select something three levels deep. The latter is trying to press the Ctrl+K hotkey in the application.

But when I looked at the online help for the "SEND" command, I don't see what the ampersand means. The help for "SEND" only shows the ampersand in relation to its main usage as a string concatenator. It doesn't say how the ampersand character is related to the letters I send in the Send command. At least, it doesn't say that as far as I can tell.

I'm sure I put them in there for a reason at some point in the past, but now I don't remember what the reason was. Now, if I remove the ampersands, the script seems to work as I expect it to work, as if the ampersands have no meaning.

Was this a feature in an older release of AutoIt that isn't there any more? What was I doing?

[JohnOne]

Maybe it is a relic from "Back in the old days". No-one can tell you why you put something in a script in the old days,

Perhaps it you just wanted to send the "&", maybe it was just poor coding trying to press an accelerator key.

There could be a number of reasons. but Send("^k") would have been an easier way for the latter.

[water]

When you create a menu entry the "&" is used to define the shortcut you can use to select the entry and which is then displayed with an underscore:

"F&ile" is then displayed as "File".

As the script works with and without & it seems to be ambiguous.

[tfabris]

Thanks, guys! Removing the ampersands now and hoping the script Just Works.