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An Introduction to the Tcl Programming Language

Article · October 1996

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 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

An Introduction to the Tcl Programming

Language

Graham Phillips
Computer Science Department
University of Southern California
Los Angeles

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 1
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Purpose

• Tcl is a scripting language for combining or “glueing” applications

together.
• The Tcl interpreter may be embedded into applications.
• A toolkit for Tcl called Tk provides routines for developing GUI
applications for the X Windows System.

Language overview

• Types: string only

• Control flow: assignment, if, while, for, foreach, switch, break,
continue, procedures, exception handling.
• Built-in functions: string manipulation, file name handling, file access,
math functions, environment variable manipulation, inter-application
communication, process creation.

Authorities

The defining document for the language is “Tcl and the Tk Toolkit” by
John K. Ousterhout, Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-63337-X.
The WWW page called “The Tcl/Tk Project At Sun Microsystems
Laboratories” may be found at
http://www.smli.com/research/tcl/

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 2
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Syntax

Each command consists of one or more words where the words are
separated by white-space:
<command> <arg1> <arg2> ... <argn>.
A Tcl script consists of one or more commands. Commands are
separated by newlines or semi-colons.
% set a 2
% set a 24; set b 15

Tcl provides three forms of substitution:

• variable substitution
• command substitution
• backslash substitution.

Variable substitution

A dollar sign $ causes variable substitution. (Similar to C-shell, except

that Tcl does not use the = character).
% set kgrams 20
% expr $kgrams * 2.2046
44.092

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 3
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Syntax cont.

Command substitution

Command substitution is performed using brackets []. The command is

evaluated and everything, including the brackets, is replaced with the
result of the command.
% set kilograms 20
% set pounds [expr $kilograms * 2.2046]
44.092

Backslash substitution

The purpose of backslash substitution is to insert special characters into

the commands.
% set message Eggs:\ \$2.18 / dozen\nGasoline:\
\$1.49 / gallon
Eggs: $2.18 / dozen
Gasoline: $1.49 / gallon

“Tcl’s variable substituting command handles only the most common

substitutions. There exist scenarios where none of the preceding forms
of substitution achieve the desired effect. More complicated situations
can be handled with a sequence of commands.” [Ousterhoud].

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 4
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Syntax cont.

Quoting with double quotes

Double quotes disable word and command separators.

% set mwg “Eggs: \$2.18 / dozen\nGasoline: \$1.49
/ gallon
Eggs: $2.18 / dozen
Gasoline: $1.49 / gallon

Substitution occurs as usual inside double quotes (similar to C-shell).

% set a 2.1
% set msg “a is $a, the square of a is [expr
$a*$a]”
a is 2.1, the square of a is 4.41

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 5
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Syntax cont.

Quoting with braces

Grouping words with braces {} prevents substitution.

% set msg {Eggs: $2.18 / dozen\nGasoline: $1.49 /
gallon}
Eggs: $2.18 / dozen\nGasoline: $1.49 / gallon

Comments

A comment line is started by the # character and extends to the end of the
line. The # character must be in the position of the first word of a
command word.
% set b 101 ;# is legal but

% set b 100 # is not legal.

wrong # args: should be “set varName ?newvalue?”

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 6
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Variables

• Tcl maintains a set of variables which are (name, value) pairs.

• Variables are not declared.
• Variable names can be any length, are case sensitive and need not start
with a letter.
• Variable values are strings or sets of strings separated by spaces.
Variables are assigned using the set command and cleared using the
unset command.
• Variables are accessed using the $ character.
• Variables may be local or global.

Associative arrays

Array elements are indexed by arbitrary strings.

% set earnings(January) 8799
Only one dimensional arrays are implemented. However more that two
dimensional arrays may be simulated by concatenating indices
% set matrix(1,1) 140
% set matrix(1,2) 218
The following script however is unable to access matrix(1,2).
% expr $matrix(1, 2)
can’t read “matrix(1, 2)”: no such variable

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 7
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Variables

• Tcl maintains a set of variables which are (name, value) pairs.

• Variables are not declared.
• Variable names can be any length, are case sensitive and need not start
with a letter.
• Variable values are strings or sets of strings separated by spaces.
Variables are assigned using the set command and cleared using the
unset command.
• Variables are accessed using the $ character.
• Variables may be local or global.

Associative arrays

Array elements are indexed by arbitrary strings.

% set earnings(January) 8799
Only one dimensional arrays are implemented. However more that two
dimensional arrays may be simulated by concatenating indices
% set matrix(1,1) 140
% set matrix(1,2) 218
The following script however is unable to access matrix(1,2).
% expr $matrix(1, 2)
can’t read “matrix(1, 2)”: no such variable

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 7
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Variables cont.

Predefined variables

The following variables may be predefined. Tcl does not require that all
applications support the following variables, but most applications do.
$argv0 is the name of the script file,
$argv is the list of command line arguments,
$argc is the number of command line arguments and
$env is an array variable whose elements are all of the processes’s
environment variables.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 8
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Expressions and Operators

Precedence of Operators
• The operators are similar to the ANSI C operators and have the same
precedence.
• The % (mod) operator has a more consistent behavior in Tcl than C. In
Tcl the remainder is always greater than or equal to zero.
• Short-circuit evaluation is used.
• The operators <,>, <=, >=. ==, != may be used with strings as well as
real numbers and integers.

Literals

Numbers beginning with 0x are treated as hexadecimal numbers,

otherwise those beginning with 0 are treated as octals. All other numbers
are treated as decimal numbers.
355 decimal
0517 octal
0x14f hex
092 illegal

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 9
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Expressions and operators cont.

Expression evaluation

A Tcl command returns a string by default. If evaluation is required then

it must be explicitly requested.
% set x 4
4
% set y 4+10
4+10
% set y x+10
x+10
% set y [expr $x + 10]
14

Order of evaluation

Tcl commands are evaluated in two steps.

• interpreter parses all commands into words while performing
substitutions
• executes the command returning a string

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 10
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Expressions cont.

Conversions

When two operands are combined using a binary operator, Tcl uses
arithmetic evaluation unless one or both of the operands cannot be parsed
as a number. The result is converted back to a string.
% set x 0
% set x 00
% if {$x == $y} {set z 1}
1
String comparison can be forced.
% string compare $x $y
-1
The global variable tcl_precision controls the precision of the
conversion. If tcl_precision = 17 then no information is lost
during the conversion.

Built-in math functions

Tcl supports a number of mathematical functions such as sin and exp. In

most cases the functions have the same behavior as the ANSI C library
procedures.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 11
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Lists

Creating lists

% concat {a b c} {d e} f {g h i}
a b c d e f g h i

% set z “$x $y”

a b c d e

% list {a b c} {d e} f {g h i}
{a b c} {d e} f {g h i}

Lists may have any depth.

% lindex {a b {c d e} f} 2
c d e

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 12
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Lists cont.

Indexing lists: lindex

% lindex {John Anne Mary Jim} 1

Anne

Searching lists: lsearch

% set x {John Anne Mary Jim}

% lsearch $x Mary
2
% lsearch -glob $x A*
1

Sorting lists: lsort

The sorting command uses control switches such as -decreasing or

-integer. User-defined sorting functions may be used as well.
% lsort -decreasing {John Anne Mary Jim}
Mary John Jim Anne

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 13
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Lists cont.

Splitting and joining lists

% set y /usr/include/sys/types.h
% split $y /
{} usr include sys types.h
% join { {} usr include sys types.h} /
/usr/include/sys/types.h

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 14
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

File I/O

Dealing with filenames

Filename expansion is performed using the glob command which

returns a list of the names of all files that match any of the pattern
arguments. The special characters are ? * [] {} and \ (compare with C-
shell’s special characters ? * [] {} ~).
% glob *.c *.h
main.c hash.c hash.h

The file command is a general purpose command with many options

for manipulating file names.
% file dirname /a/b/c
/a/b
% file extension src/main.c
.c
% file rootname src/main.c
src/main
% file tail /a/b/c
c

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 15
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Statements and flow control

Tcl’s control flow commands are similar to the control flow statements in
C and C-shell.

IF statement

The if command evaluates an expression, tests its result and

conditionally executes a script based on the result. It receives two
arguments, the first is an expression while the second is a script. The
expression is typically placed in braces to delay substitution until the
command is executed. The following example sets a variable x to zero,
if it is negative.
% if { $x < 0} {
set x 0
}
An alternative form of the if statement contains elseif clauses.
% if {$x < 0} {
...
} elseif {$x == 0} {
} elseif {$x == 1} {
...
}

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 16
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

The while statement

The while loop takes two arguments: an expression and a script. The
while statement returns an empty string as the result. Note that the
brace { must be on the same line as the preceding word or else the
newline is treated as the command separator.
% set i 1
% while {$i <= 4} {
puts “$i squared is [expr $i*$i]” }
incr i 1
}
1 squared is 1
2 squared is 4
3 squared is 9
4 squared is 16

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 17
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

The for statement

The first argument of the for loop is an initialization script, the second
is a termination script, the third is a condition and the fourth is the body
of the loop. The first expression is executed as a Tcl script. If the
condition evaluates to non-zero, for executes the body followed by the
reinitialization script.
% for {set i 1} {$i <= 4} {incr i 1} {
puts “$i squared is [expr $i*$i]” }
1 squared is 1
2 squared is 4
3 squared is 9
4 squared is 16

The foreach statement

The foreach statement executes a Tcl script for each element in a list.
% foreach i {1 2 3 4} {
puts “$i squared is [expr $i*$i]” }

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 18
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

The switch statement

The switch statement provides a concise notation for multiple if

statements. When a match is found, it executes the corresponding script
and returns the value of that script as its value. Patterns need not be
exhaustive.
% switch $x {a {incr t1} b {incr t2} c {incr t3}}
% switch $x a {incr t1} b {incr t2} c {incr t3}
The first scripts may be written across several lines as follows:
% switch $x {
a {incr t1}
b {incr t2}
c {incr t3}}
The behavior of the matching can be modified with -exact, -glob
and -regexp.
% foreach i $x {
switch -regexp $i {
a { ... }
^[0-9]+$ {incr num_digits }
default { ... }
}

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 19
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Statements and flow control cont.

The eval command

The eval command accepts any number of arguments. The eval

command concatenates the arguments with separator spaces and then
executes the result as a script. The eval command has two primary
purposes.
• To save commands as variables that may be executed at a later stage
% set cmd “set a 0”
...
% eval $cmd

• To force another level of parsing. Compare the following two code

fragments
% set vars {a b c d}
foreach i $vars {
unset $i
}
% set vars {a b c d}
eval unset $vars

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 20
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Procedures

Tcl procedures are implemented using the proc keyword. The first
argument to proc is the procedure name, the second is a list of
arguments and the third is the procedure body.
• Procedures are not declared. Once the proc command completes, a
new command exists which may be invoked like any other Tcl
command.
• Within the procedure, the procedure arguments are local variables
while all other variables are global variables.
• Global variables must be referenced using the global command
which sets variable bindings (e.g. global x y). Once invoked, the
bindings remain effective until the procedure ends.
• Procedure arguments may be passed by value or by reference.
• Arguments may have default values.
• A variable number of arguments is permitted.
• Tcl does not provide a form of variable equivalent to static variable in
C and therefore global variables must be used for purposes like this.

An implementation of the factorial function.

% proc fac x {
if $x <= 1 {return 1}
expr $x * [fac [expr $x -1 ]]
}

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 21
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Procedures cont.

Call by reference is implemented using the upvar command. The

following example prints the contents of an array.
% proc parray name {
upvar $name a
foreach el [lsort [array names a]] {
puts “$el = $a($el)”
}
}
% set info(age) 37
% set info(position) “Vice President”
% parray info
age = 37
position = Vice President

Tcl procedures may be implemented in C for higher performance and

these C routines may be invoked in the same way as the original Tcl
scripts.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 22
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Features not covered

Exception handling

Exceptions may be trapped using the Tcl catch command, allowing

unforeseen asynchronous events to be processed.

Concurrency

Tcl does not support multi-threading.

String manipulation

Tcl supports two mechanisms for matching strings. The first is called
“globbing” that is based on the UNIX mechanism for file name
expansion. The second uses regular expressions.

Processes

Tcl provides several commands to manipulate processes. New processes

can be created, environment variables can be read and modified, and
processes can be terminated.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 23
 U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

Comments

A WWW page entitled “Comparisons of Tcl with other systems may be

found at http://icemcfd.com/tcl/comparison.html
Below are some extracts from this page.
“Tcl was not designed to be a serious programming language. It was
designed to be a scripting language. It lacks arrays, it lacks structure
from which you can make linked lists” [Richard Stallman - GNU Project]
“After a few thousand lines of code, I spent most of my time getting my
program to hold together and trying to map and unmap my data
structures to strings. In the end I switched to STk.” [Robert DeLine -
CMU]
“I didn’t design Tcl for building huge programs with 10’s or 100’s of
thousands of lines of Tcl ... I don’t claim that Tcl is without flaws. Some
of the flaws, like the lack of a compiler and the lack of module support,
will get fixed over time” [John Ousterhoud - Sun Microsystems]
“Tcl/Tk is lexically too complicated. The reason is, the application into
which the scripting language will be embedded doubtless have its own
notational conventions. To have “all the good characters already taken”
by the scripting language means that lots of quoting needs to go
on.”[Wayne Throop]
“When it comes to writing serious applications requiring complex typing
(eg. a project management system for concurrent engineering, or a
product documentation and information system for mechanical
engineering), Tcl/Tk is not well suited primarily because it is lacking a
proper type system.” [Juergen Wagner].

GRAHAM PHILLIPS
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
USC 24

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