< language > /tik*l/ (Tcl) An interpreted string processing language for issuing commands to interactive programs, developed by John Ousterhout at 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. 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-bit clean . 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)