Tool Command Language

language /tik*l/ (Tcl) An interpreted string processing

language for issuing commands to interactive programs,

developed by John Ousterhout at UCB. Each applicationprogram can extend tcl with its own set of commands.

Tcl is like a text-oriented Lisp, but lets you write

algebraic expressions for simplicity and to avoid scaring

people away. Though originally designed to be a "scripting

language" rather than for serious programming, Tcl has been

used successfully for programs with hundreds of thousands of

lines.

It has a peculiar but simple syntax. It may be used as an

embedded interpreter in application programs. It has

exceptions and packages (called libraries), name-spaces

for procedures and variables, and provide/require. It

supports dynamic loading of object code. It is eight-bitclean. It has only three variable types: strings, lists and

associative arrays but no structures.

Tcl and its associated GUI toolkit, Tk run on all

flavors of Unix, Microsoft Windows, Macintosh and VMS.

Tcl runs on the Amiga and many other platforms.

Current version: 8.0.3, as of 1998-09-25.

See also expect (control interactive programs and pattern

match on their output), Cygnus Tcl Tools, [incr Tcl] (adds

classes and inheritence to Tcl), Scriptics (John

Ousterhout's company that is the home of Tcl development and

the TclPro tool suite), Tcl Consortium (a non-profit agency

dedicated to promoting Tcl), tclhttpd (an embeddable

Tcl-based web server), tclx (adds many commands to Tcl),

tcl-debug.

comp.lang.tcl FAQ at MIT.

or at purl.org .

Scriptics downloads.

Kanji .

Usenet newsgroups: news:comp.lang.tcl.announce,

news:comp.lang.tcl.

["Tcl: An Embeddable Command Language", J. Ousterhout, Proc

1990 Winter USENIX Conf].

(1998-11-27)