AutoHotKey Source Code Line Break

Question

Is there a way to do line break in AutoHotKey souce code? My code is getting longer than 80 characters and I would like to separate them neatly. I know we can do this in some other language, such as VBA for example below:

http://www.excelforum.com/excel-programming-vba-macros/564301-how-do-i-break-vba-code-into-two-or-more-lines.html

If Day(Date) > 10 _
And Hour(Time) > 20 Then _
MsgBox "It is after the tenth " & _
"and it is evening"

Is there a souce code line break in AutoHotKey? I use a older version of the AutoHotKey, ver 1.0.47.06

Answer 1

There is a Splitting a Long Line into a Series of Shorter Ones section in the documentation:

Long lines can be divided up into a collection of smaller ones to improve readability and maintainability. This does not reduce the script's execution speed because such lines are merged in memory the moment the script launches.

Method #1: A line that starts with "and", "or", ||, &&, a comma, or a period is automatically merged with the line directly above it (in v1.0.46+, the same is true for all other expression operators except ++ and --). In the following example, the second line is appended to the first because it begins with a comma:

FileAppend, This is the text to append.`n   ; A comment is allowed here.
    , %A_ProgramFiles%\SomeApplication\LogFile.txt  ; Comment.

Similarly, the following lines would get merged into a single line because the last two start with "and" or "or":

if (Color = "Red" or Color = "Green"  or Color = "Blue"   ; Comment.
    or Color = "Black" or Color = "Gray" or Color = "White")   ; Comment.
    and ProductIsAvailableInColor(Product, Color)   ; Comment. 

The ternary operator is also a good candidate:

ProductIsAvailable := (Color = "Red")
    ? false  ; We don't have any red products, so don't bother calling the function.
    : ProductIsAvailableInColor(Product, Color)

Although the indentation used in the examples above is optional, it might improve clarity by indicating which lines belong to ones above them. Also, it is not necessary to include extra spaces for lines starting with the words "AND" and "OR"; the program does this automatically. Finally, blank lines or comments may be added between or at the end of any of the lines in the above examples.

Method #2: This method should be used to merge a large number of lines or when the lines are not suitable for Method #1. Although this method is especially useful for auto-replace hotstrings, it can also be used with any command or expression. For example:

; EXAMPLE #1:
Var = 
(
Line 1 of the text.
Line 2 of the text. By default, a line feed (`n) is present between lines. 
)

; EXAMPLE #2: 
FileAppend,  ; The comma is required in this case. 
(
A line of text. 
By default, the hard carriage return (Enter) between the previous line and this one will be written to the file as a linefeed (`n).
     By default, the tab to the left of this line will also be written to the file (the same is true for spaces).
By default, variable references such as %Var% are resolved to the variable's contents. 
), C:\My File.txt

In the examples above, a series of lines is bounded at the top and bottom by a pair of parentheses. This is known as a continuation section. Notice that the bottom line contains FileAppend's last parameter after the closing parenthesis. This practice is optional; it is done in cases like this so that the comma will be seen as a parameter-delimiter rather than a literal comma.

Please read the documentation link for more details.

So your example can be rewritten as the following:

If Day(Date) > 10 
And Hour(Time) > 20 Then
    MsgBox
    (
    It is after the tenth 
    and it is evening
    )

Answer 2

I'm not aware of a general way of doing this, but it seems you can break a line and start the remainder of the broken line (e.g. the next real line) with an operator. As long as the second line (and the third, fourth, etc., as applicable) starts with (optional whitespace plus) an operator, AHK will treat the whole thing as one line.

For instance:

hello := "Hello, "
       . "world!"
MsgBox %hello%

The presence of the concatenation operator . at the logical beginning of the second line here makes AHK treat both lines as one.

(I also tried leaving the operator and the end of the first line and starting the second off with a double-quoted string; that didn't work.)