<language> /tik*l/ (TCL) A string processing language for issuing commands to interactive programs, by John Ousterhout <ouster@cs.berkeley.edu> of UCB. Each application program 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. It was not designed to be a serious programming language. It was designed to be a "scripting language". It lacks (numerically indexed) arrays and structures and numerical operations are slow. Tcl is only sufficient for small programs. 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) but only a single name-space. It has provide/require but no dynamic loading. It is 8 bit clean. It has only three variable types: strings, lists and associative arrays.
Current version: 7.3.
See also Cygnus Tcl Tools, tclx, tcl-debug, tk.
FTP. MS-DOS. Macintosh. Macintosh. Kanji.
Usenet newsgroup: comp.lang.tcl.
["Tcl: An Embeddable Command Language", J. Ousterhout, Proc 1990 Winter USENIX Conf].
(08 May 1996)