How do I delete the current line using AutoHotkey? - autohotkey

Question

Using an AutoHotkey script I'd like to set the keyboard command Ctrl+D to delete the current line in any active Windows app.
How?

Answer 1

^d::Send {Home}{ShiftDown}{End}{Right}{ShiftUp}{Del}
Might not work in all edge cases, but passes some very basic testing in Notepad. =~)

Answer 2

HaveSpacesuit's answer works but after using it for a while I realized it deletes the active line and sometimes re-positions the spacing of the line below.
This led me to rethink his solution. Instead of going from the front of the line to the back, I tried going from back to front. This solved the re-positioning issue.
SendInput {End}
SendInput +{Home}
SendInput ^+{Left}
SendInput {Delete}
There is still a small problem though. If the cursor is on an empty line, with more empty lines above, then all empty lines get deleted.
I don't know a key combo to replace ^+{Left} that doesn't have this behavior so I had to write a more comprehensive solution.
^d:: DeleteCurrentLine()
DeleteCurrentLine() {
SendInput {End}
SendInput +{Home}
If get_SelectedText() = "" {
; On an empty line.
SendInput {Delete}
} Else {
SendInput ^+{Left}
SendInput {Delete}
}
}
get_SelectedText() {
; See if selection can be captured without using the clipboard.
WinActive("A")
ControlGetFocus ctrl
ControlGet selectedText, Selected,, %ctrl%
;If not, use the clipboard as a fallback.
If (selectedText = "") {
originalClipboard := ClipboardAll ; Store current clipboard.
Clipboard := ""
SendInput ^c
ClipWait .2
selectedText := ClipBoard
ClipBoard := originalClipboard
}
Return selectedText
}
As far as I can tell this produces no unexpected behaviour.
However, be careful if you're using a clipboard manager as this script uses the clipboard, if necessary, as an intermediary to get the selected text. This will impact clipboard manager history.

Answer 3

In case you run into problems where you need different behaviours for different programs, you can "duplicate" your ^d command for specific programs like this:
SetTitleMatchMode, 2 ; Makes the #IfWinActive name searching flexible
^d::Send {Home}{ShiftDown}{End}{Right}{ShiftUp}{Del} ; Generic response to ^d.
#IfWinActive, Gmail ; Gmail specific response
^d::Send {Home}{ShiftDown}{End}{Right}{ShiftUp}{Del} ; adapt this line for gmail
#IfWinActive ; End of Gmail's specific response to ^d
#IfWinActive, Excel ; Excel specific response.
^d::Send {Home}{ShiftDown}{End}{Right}{ShiftUp}{Del} ; adapt this line for Excel
#IfWinActive ; End of Excel's specific response to ^d
This way your ^d command will work differently in Excel and Gmail.

Answer 4

I have a simple way to solve the repositioning issue. Without using the clipboard.
The repositioning issue is due to the need to handle 2 separate cases.
if there's existing text in a line,
we want to select them all, and delete the text (backspace 1)
and backspace one more time to delete the empty line (backspace 2)
if it's a blank line,
we want to delete the empty line (backspace 1)
To cater for both of above cases, I introduced a dummy character.
This will make sure BOTH cases will act the same way.
So doing backspace 2 times, will result in the same transformation each time.
Simply,
; enable delete line shortcut
^d::
Send {Home}
Send {Shift Down}{End}{Shift Up}
Send d
Send {Backspace 2}
Send {down}
return
Disadvantage with this approach,
the dummy character "d" will appear when you undo. Not a bad tradeoff since I don't undo delete lines very often.