AutoHotKey script replace backslashes with forward slashes

Question

I run a Linux emulator (or subsystem) under Windows 10, and sometimes I need to past Windows paths in the Linux console. Windows paths use backslashes \ to separate directories whereas Linux paths use forward slashes / instead.

To avoid having to replace the \ with / manually, I have tried using an AHK script to do the replacement on any path that I copy, but it doesn't want to work.

This is my script (I have marked in the code ##works until here## the furthest point until where it seems to be working):

^+7:: ; Ctrl+Shift+7 (/)

;Empty the Clipboard.
    Clipboard =
;Copy the select text to the Clipboard.
    SendInput, ^c
;Wait for the Clipboard to fill.
    ClipWait

;Perform the RegEx find and replace operation,
;where the needle is what we want to replace.
    haystack := Clipboard
    needle := "\"
    replacement := "/"
    result := RegExReplace(haystack, needle, replacement)

;Empty the Clipboard
    Clipboard =
;Copy the result to the Clipboard.
    Clipboard := result
;##works until here##
;Wait for the Clipboard to fill.
    ClipWait 

;-- Optional: --
;Send (paste) the contents of the new Clipboard.
    SendInput, %Clipboard%

;Done!
    return

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Answer 1

It seems the backslash needs to be escaped to be recognized by RegExReplace, like this:

needle := "\\"

Answer 2

cd to windows dir using cdw in WSL

In zsh, use cdw followed by the directory path (fixed) to change the working directory to a Windows folder.

# cd into Win dir
function cdw(){
    # cdw = cd to window dir
    # win dir should look like "g:/demo_dir/app_folder" (note these are forward slashes)
    # Need Autohotky to convert all backward slashes in directory pathes into forward slashes 
    cd "$(wslpath "$1")"
}

From the Windows part, use the following AHK script to flip all backslashes in the clipboard. This is checked every time that the clipboard refreshes and directories are recognized with :/ as a marker.

; In preamble (before the first return statement)
; Note, the ClipChanged function is premitive: it does not deal with whitespaces properly and it will screw things up. 
; Comment out the line in the preamble when done with it.

OnClipboardChange("ClipChanged")

; Then, after the first return statement, complete the function with the following:
ClipChanged(Type) {
; This is a very limited function. Only use it when needed
    ; Step 1: take out the trailing backslash
    ClipSave := Clipboard
    haystack := RTrim(ClipSave, "//")
    ; Step 2: swap / to be /
    needle := "//"
    replacement := "/"
    ; haystack := RegExReplace(haystack, needle, replacement)
    Clipboard := RegExReplace(haystack, needle, replacement)
}

NOTE: the AHK function ClipChanged is only a proof of concept. I turned off the line OnClipboardChange("ClipChanged") after finished populating a Tmux session with 10+ folders.

---

This is how the whole thing works in action, where I:

1. Copied the g:\ string from the Run window, and
2. Issued cdw + mouse-middle-button in a WSL window

Behind the scene, the AHK script fixes the backslash probelm and the zsh console happily admits g:/ as a valid input argument and passes to cdw() function.