Autohotkey is a nice tool to be familiar with—it enables you to create advanced hotkeys. Today, I built a very simple script which saved me a bunch of time. Here’s the skinny:

I’ve been blogging about software a lot and these posts are often heavy with terms or phrases that I wrap in http://www.autohotkey.com/ tags. Unfortunately, my editor (Live Writer), as awesome as it is, doesn’t support something like this. AutoHotKey to the rescue!

Here’s the script:

#c::                       ; fire on WIN+c
AutoTrim Off               ; Retain any leading and trailing whitespace on the clipboard.
ClipSaved := ClipboardAll  ; Save the entire clipboard so we can restore it when we're done
SendInput ^x               ; cut the selection to the clipboard
ClipWait                   ; wait for the clipboard to contain something
SendInput <code>%clipboard%</code>` ; Output what was selected, surrounded by <code> tags
Clipboard := ClipSaved     ; Restore the original clipboard
ClipSaved =                ; Free the memory in case the clipboard was very large.
return

Load this into your AHK script, hit reload, and fire away. Select some text, hit WIN+C, and watch in amazement as it is surrounded by <code> tags.