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man pages section 1: User Commands

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Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

foreach (1t)

Name

foreach - Iterate over all elements in one or more lists

Synopsis

foreach varname list body
foreach varlist1 list1 ?varlist2 list2 ...? body

Description

foreach(1t)                  Tcl Built-In Commands                 foreach(1t)



______________________________________________________________________________

NAME
       foreach - Iterate over all elements in one or more lists

SYNOPSIS
       foreach varname list body
       foreach varlist1 list1 ?varlist2 list2 ...? body
______________________________________________________________________________


DESCRIPTION
       The  foreach  command implements a loop where the loop variable(s) take
       on values from one or more lists.  In the simplest case  there  is  one
       loop variable, varname, and one list, list, that is a list of values to
       assign to varname.  The body argument is a Tcl script.  For  each  ele-
       ment  of  list  (in order from first to last), foreach assigns the con-
       tents of the element to varname as if the lindex command had been  used
       to extract the element, then calls the Tcl interpreter to execute body.

       In  the general case there can be more than one value list (e.g., list1
       and list2), and each value list can be associated with a list  of  loop
       variables  (e.g., varlist1 and varlist2).  During each iteration of the
       loop the variables of each varlist are assigned consecutive values from
       the  corresponding  list.   Values  in each list are used in order from
       first to last, and each value is used exactly once.  The  total  number
       of  loop  iterations  is large enough to use up all the values from all
       the value lists.  If a value list does not contain enough elements  for
       each of its loop variables in each iteration, empty values are used for
       the missing elements.

       The break and continue statements may be invoked inside body, with  the
       same effect as in the for command.  Foreach returns an empty string.

EXAMPLES
       This  loop  prints  every  value in a list together with the square and
       cube of the value:

              set values {1 3 5 7 2 4 6 8}  ;# Odd numbers first, for fun!
              puts "Value\tSquare\tCube"    ;# Neat-looking header
              foreach x $values {           ;# Now loop and print...
                  puts " $x\t [expr {$x**2}]\t [expr {$x**3}]"
              }

       The following loop uses i and j as loop variables to iterate over pairs
       of elements of a single list.

              set x {}
              foreach {i j} {a b c d e f} {
                  lappend x $j $i
              }
              # The value of x is "b a d c f e"
              # There are 3 iterations of the loop.

       The next loop uses i and j to iterate over two lists in parallel.

              set x {}
              foreach i {a b c} j {d e f g} {
                  lappend x $i $j
              }
              # The value of x is "a d b e c f {} g"
              # There are 4 iterations of the loop.

       The two forms are combined in the following example.

              set x {}
              foreach i {a b c} {j k} {d e f g} {
                  lappend x $i $j $k
              }
              # The value of x is "a d e b f g c {} {}"
              # There are 3 iterations of the loop.



ATTRIBUTES
       See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:


       +---------------+------------------+
       |ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE  |
       +---------------+------------------+
       |Availability   | runtime/tcl-8    |
       +---------------+------------------+
       |Stability      | Uncommitted      |
       +---------------+------------------+

SEE ALSO
       for(n), while(n), break(n), continue(n)


KEYWORDS
       foreach, iteration, list, loop



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                                                                foreach(1t)