eval - Evaluate a Tcl script
eval arg ?arg ...?
eval(1t) Tcl Built-In Commands eval(1t)
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NAME
eval - Evaluate a Tcl script
SYNOPSIS
eval arg ?arg ...?
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DESCRIPTION
Eval takes one or more arguments, which together comprise a Tcl script
containing one or more commands. Eval concatenates all its arguments
in the same fashion as the concat command, passes the concatenated
string to the Tcl interpreter recursively, and returns the result of
that evaluation (or any error generated by it). Note that the list
command quotes sequences of words in such a way that they are not fur-
ther expanded by the eval command.
EXAMPLES
Often, it is useful to store a fragment of a script in a variable and
execute it later on with extra values appended. This technique is used
in a number of places throughout the Tcl core (e.g. in fcopy, lsort and
trace command callbacks). This example shows how to do this using core
Tcl commands:
set script {
puts "logging now"
lappend $myCurrentLogVar
}
set myCurrentLogVar log1
# Set up a switch of logging variable part way through!
after 20000 set myCurrentLogVar log2
for {set i 0} {$i<10} {incr i} {
# Introduce a random delay
after [expr {int(5000 * rand())}]
update ;# Check for the asynch log switch
eval $script $i [clock clicks]
}
Note that in the most common case (where the script fragment is actu-
ally just a list of words forming a command prefix), it is better to
use {*}$script when doing this sort of invocation pattern. It is less
general than the eval command, and hence easier to make robust in prac-
tice. The following procedure acts in a way that is analogous to the
lappend command, except it inserts the argument values at the start of
the list in the variable:
proc lprepend {varName args} {
upvar 1 $varName var
# Ensure that the variable exists and contains a list
lappend var
# Now we insert all the arguments in one go
set var [eval [list linsert $var 0] $args]
}
However, the last line would now normally be written without eval, like
this:
set var [linsert $var 0 {*}$args]
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/tcl-8 |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
catch(n), concat(n), error(n), errorCode(n), errorInfo(n), interp(n),
list(n), namespace(n), subst(n), uplevel(n)
KEYWORDS
concatenate, evaluate, script
NOTES
Source code for open source software components in Oracle Solaris can
be found at https://www.oracle.com/downloads/opensource/solaris-source-
code-downloads.html.
This software was built from source available at
https://github.com/oracle/solaris-userland. The original community
source was downloaded from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tcl/tcl-
core8.6.7-src.tar.gz.
Further information about this software can be found on the open source
community website at https://www.tcl.tk/.
Tcl eval(1t)