When a GUI button triggers a loop, can other functions be called from buttons?

[batfastad]

Hi everyone

I've got a GUI which is a wrapper to run a command line utility multiple times for batch processing.

I have a button which triggers a loop over an array and depending on how many files the user has selected, this batch operation can take some time.

I'm hoping I can have the button be a sort of start/stop, so once the loop has started, the button captions changes to Stop (already done) and the loop exits at the next possible point.

The command line utility is triggered by ShellExecuteWait()

But while my script is looping and ShellExecuteWait()ing, can other GUI buttons trigger any other functions/actions?

Or am I limited because scripts are single-threaded?

Such as aborting the process started by ShellExecuteWait()?

Cheers, B

[BrewManNH]

You won't be able to use the buttons if you're using ShellExecuteWait, because that causes the script to wait until the process started by it has finished before it continues the rest of the script.

As to interrupting a running function, try the information in this link.

[batfastad]

Ok perfect. Thanks for the info

[batfastad]

I've just tried one of the methods in that wiki article and I have a question.

I'm using OnEvent mode and trying to trigger a function abort from a GUI button, not an Accelerator or HotKey.

I've got the following code to interrupt Windows messages and it triggers the _WM_COMMAND function to set the abort flag. The abort flag is then checked in my batch loop at the start and end of each iteration.

GUIRegisterMsg($WM_COMMAND, "_WM_COMMAND")
...
Func _WM_COMMAND($hWnd, $Msg, $wParam, $lParam)
If BitAND($wParam, 0x0000FFFF) = $ButtonStartStop Then $abortflag = True
Return
EndFunc

The GUI button is designed to be a start/stop button.

When my looping function (the function I want to be able to abort) has started, the button text is changed to "Stop".

Also when my script starts, this button is disabled. The user has to use a browse button to select a valid directory, then the Start button is enabled to the user.

So at various points in my script I am enabling/disabling the Start/Stop button like this...

GUICtrlSetState($ButtonStartStop, $GUI_ENABLE)
...
GUICtrlSetState($ButtonStartStop, $GUI_DISABLE)

Will the action of me enabling/disabling the Start/Stop button from elsewhere in my script, cause the Windows message handler function _WM_COMMAND to be invoked?

Cheers, B

EDIT: I have actually got this running just the way I want by using the method mentioned at the top of the article. Indirectly triggering my main batch loop within the GUI idling loop, then checking an abort flag at various stages.

However I would still like to know if the above is true.

Edited October 4, 2012 by batfastad

[BrewManNH]

It should be easy enough for you to check this with something like a ConsoleWrite that's invoked whenever the WM_COMMAND function is jumped to.