Hotkey to restart autohotkey script?

Question

Say I have an autohotkey script C:\path\to\my\script running. Is there a way to define a hotkey that re-starts it?

Answer 1

In order to prevent duplicate instances, I normally do not re-launch a script but use the build-in function Reload. I launch this with Ctrl+Win+Alt+R and use Ctrl+Win+Alt+E to edit the main AHK script.

^#!r::Reload

Actually, my script looks like this:

^#!r::
Send, ^s ; To save a changed script
Sleep, 300 ; give it time to save the script
Reload
Return

^!#e::Edit

As a matter of fact, all the way at the top of my script I have this to give me a visual and audio indication that the script was restarted:

#SingleInstance Force
#installKeybdHook
#Persistent
Menu, Tray, Icon , Shell32.dll, 25, 1
TrayTip, AutoHotKey, Started, 1
SoundBeep, 300, 150
Return

Answer 2

Make a hotkey that runs a script, which in this case is the same script and then exit.

somehotkey::
    Run, C:\path\to\my\script.ahk
    ExitApp
return

Answer 3

I found this to be the safest option of them all, because it takes care that the correct script is reloaded when you have multiple scripts running simultaneously, which was a recurring issue for me. The combination of the following also ensures that only one instance of a script will ever run at a time. The ScriptFullPath variable includes the name of the script.

#SingleInstance Force ;put this at the top of the script
^r::run, %A_ScriptFullPath%