Anyway to find functions by function? and not by name?

[Aeterna]

I'm a new programmer, and brand new to AutoIT. So sometimes (ok who am I kidding), nearly all the time, I find myself with an an idea.... but I have no way of going about implementing it. When I search the help, it isn't that helpful because I don't even know what I'm looking for. It's like trying to find a word in the dictionary when all you have is the definition to go by.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance! you guys rock by the way.

[GEOSoft]

I'm a new programmer, and brand new to AutoIT. So sometimes (ok who am I kidding), nearly all the time, I find myself with an an idea.... but I have no way of going about implementing it. When I search the help, it isn't that helpful because I don't even know what I'm looking for. It's like trying to find a word in the dictionary when all you have is the definition to go by.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance! you guys rock by the way.

We need a slightly better description of what you are attempting to do and just what functions you are refering to. If you mean from the standard UDFs then it's possible to get the functions description if that is what you want. I would probably code that to return a 2 dimension array with the function name as element[0] and the description as element[1]. Fastest method would be to use StringRegExp().

[Aeterna]

I just mean that if I want to find out how to do a specific thing, I have to look through all the functions descriptions, or come ask for help on the boards.

Is there any way I can more precisely search for the functions I'm looking for without having to read through them all?

[oMBRa]

where is the problem... all function are sorted by category, use your common-sense

[martin]

I'm a new programmer, and brand new to AutoIT. So sometimes (ok who am I kidding), nearly all the time, I find myself with an an idea.... but I have no way of going about implementing it. When I search the help, it isn't that helpful because I don't even know what I'm looking for. It's like trying to find a word in the dictionary when all you have is the definition to go by.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance! you guys rock by the way.

I think it is best to read the help and try the examples.

If you want to do something particular then you can break the job into sections; one section might be gui design so look at the guicreate and guictrlcreate* functions, another section might be to do with file reading and writing so look at the File* commands. There is no quick way to learn it all but reading the posts in the forums helps me a lot, and trying things and struggling. There will always be people here to help.

[LarryDalooza]

Does your help file not have a "Search" tab? We haven't gotten around to clairvoyance yet... but it is in the feature request list.

Lar.

[GEOSoft]

We haven't gotten around to clairvoyance yet... but it is in the feature request list.

And I hope it gets added soon, even sooner if possible.

[Aeterna]

haha, thanks guys.

When my ego recovers I'll go back and stop being an idiot

[muncherw]

I'm a new programmer, and brand new to AutoIT. So sometimes (ok who am I kidding), nearly all the time, I find myself with an an idea.... but I have no way of going about implementing it. When I search the help, it isn't that helpful because I don't even know what I'm looking for. It's like trying to find a word in the dictionary when all you have is the definition to go by.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance! you guys rock by the way.

I understand exactly what you are saying. Often I will just search the forums with the problem and will eventually stumble on to someone saying to use a certain function. The otherday I looked for something for about 30 minutes before eventually finding. It's hard when you don't know a functions name because you could spend time looking for something to, say, copy folders but there is no copy folder function only a copy file function. That's not a great example because searching the help file tells you right away that you use a flag to get it to deal with files, however, sometimes the descriptions don't use words that you might think are intuitive for what you want the function to do.

I agree with most everyone that using the search function will get you what you want from the helpfile 90% of the time. If after searching for a fair amount of time in both the helpfile and the forums, then it might be a good time to make a request stating what you want to do and see if anyone knows what function you might use. Also the more you play with AutoIt the easier it is to guess at what functions might help.

I don't know if this helps at all but at least I understand what you are saying and have from time to time felt the same frustration.

[PsaltyDS]

Does your help file not have a "Search" tab? We haven't gotten around to clairvoyance yet... but it is in the feature request list.

Lar.

Valik, having already implemented clairvoyance in his private build of 4.0.0.0 Alpha, rejected that feature request before it was even made.

[Aeterna]

Well, I think ultimately it will just come down to familiarity with the program and the language. This program is so nice though that I had to ask if there was an equally awesome way of searching for functionality haha.

[GEOSoft]

Well, I think ultimately it will just come down to familiarity with the program and the language. This program is so nice though that I had to ask if there was an equally awesome way of searching for functionality haha.

What you are asking for is not impossible, it's just more work then the effort would prove to be worth. It's much prefered that people study the help file and learn how to use AutoIt properly.

It would be a simple matter for example to return the decription of each function in the standard UDF's, I already have most of those functions in my private UDFs. For the standard AutoIt functions it could be added to my on-line help by adding keywords but that method would be less than 100% perfect and I'm not about to add keywords to each and every page.

Just study the help file and if you have a problem then you can ask on the forums.

Edited November 13, 2008 by GEOSoft