autohotkey - Mapping Ctrl+w to Alt+w sends both Ctrl+Alt+w

I'm using Autohotkey to map Ctrl+w to Alt+w for Cloud9 to close inner tabs with Ctrl+w like usual instead of their Alt+w. I tried to use the following simple mapping

^w::!w

But it sends Ctrl+Alt+w with closes all tabs except current tab which wasn't what I wanted.

How can I tell autohotkey to not actually send the Ctrl key that I press for this hotkey?

Answer

Try the following instead:

Ctrl & w::Send !w

AutoHotKey has special handling for remapping the Ctrl key to the Alt key:

When the source key is LCtrl and the destination key is an Alt key,
the line Send {Blind}{LAlt DownTemp} is replaced by Send {Blind}{LCtrl
Up}{LAlt DownTemp}. The same is true if the source is RCtrl, except
that {RCtrl up} is used.

This special handling is specifically designed to prevent the behavior you observed. If you think about a simpler remapping like p::v, you'd probably want CtrlP to be treated like ^v so that you can paste with your P. In general, AutoHotKey tries to allow modifying keys to do their thing while triggering a hotkey.