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Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

Tcl (1t)

Name

Tcl - Tool Command Language

Synopsis

Summary of Tcl language syntax.

Description

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



______________________________________________________________________________

NAME
       Tcl - Tool Command Language

SYNOPSIS
       Summary of Tcl language syntax.
______________________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION
       The  following  rules  define  the syntax and semantics of the Tcl lan-
       guage:

       [1] Commands.
              A Tcl script is a string containing one or more commands.  Semi-
              colons  and  newlines  are  command  separators unless quoted as
              described below.  Close brackets are command terminators  during
              command substitution (see below) unless quoted.

       [2] Evaluation.
              A command is evaluated in two steps.  First, the Tcl interpreter
              breaks the command into  words  and  performs  substitutions  as
              described  below.  These substitutions are performed in the same
              way for all commands.  Secondly,  the  first  word  is  used  to
              locate a command procedure to carry out the command, then all of
              the words of the command are passed to  the  command  procedure.
              The  command procedure is free to interpret each of its words in
              any way it likes, such as an integer, variable  name,  list,  or
              Tcl  script.   Different  commands interpret their words differ-
              ently.

       [3] Words.
              Words of a command are separated by white space (except for new-
              lines, which are command separators).

       [4] Double quotes.
              If  the first character of a word is double-quote (""") then the
              word is terminated by the next double-quote character.  If semi-
              colons,  close  brackets,  or  white space characters (including
              newlines) appear between the quotes then  they  are  treated  as
              ordinary characters and included in the word.  Command substitu-
              tion, variable substitution, and backslash substitution are per-
              formed  on the characters between the quotes as described below.
              The double-quotes are not retained as part of the word.

       [5] Argument expansion.
              If a word starts with the string "{*}" followed by a  non-white-
              space  character, then the leading "{*}" is removed and the rest
              of the word is parsed and substituted as any other  word.  After
              substitution,  the  word is parsed as a list (without command or
              variable substitutions; backslash substitutions are performed as
              is  normal  for a list and individual internal words may be sur-
              rounded by either braces or double-quote  characters),  and  its
              words  are added to the command being substituted. For instance,
              "cmd a {*}{b [c]} d {*}{$e f {g h}}" is equivalent to "cmd  a  b
              {[c]} d {$e} f {g h}".

       [6] Braces.
              If the first character of a word is an open brace ("{") and rule
              [5] does not apply, then the word is terminated by the  matching
              close  brace ("}").  Braces nest within the word: for each addi-
              tional open brace there must be an additional close brace  (how-
              ever,  if an open brace or close brace within the word is quoted
              with a backslash then it is not counted in locating the matching
              close  brace).  No substitutions are performed on the characters
              between the braces except  for  backslash-newline  substitutions
              described  below,  nor do semi-colons, newlines, close brackets,
              or white space receive any  special  interpretation.   The  word
              will consist of exactly the characters between the outer braces,
              not including the braces themselves.

       [7] Command substitution.
              If a word contains an open bracket ("[") then Tcl performs  com-
              mand  substitution.   To  do this it invokes the Tcl interpreter
              recursively to process the characters following the open bracket
              as  a Tcl script.  The script may contain any number of commands
              and must be terminated by a close bracket ("]").  The result  of
              the  script (i.e. the result of its last command) is substituted
              into the word in place of the brackets and all of the characters
              between  them.  There may be any number of command substitutions
              in a single word.  Command  substitution  is  not  performed  on
              words enclosed in braces.

       [8] Variable substitution.
              If  a  word  contains a dollar-sign ("$") followed by one of the
              forms described below, then Tcl performs variable  substitution:
              the dollar-sign and the following characters are replaced in the
              word by the value of a variable.  Variable substitution may take
              any of the following forms:

              $name          Name  is the name of a scalar variable;  the name
                             is a sequence of one or more characters that  are
                             a letter, digit, underscore, or namespace separa-
                             tors (two or more colons).   Letters  and  digits
                             are  only  the  standard ASCII ones (0-9, A-Z and
                             a-z).

              $name(index)   Name gives the name  of  an  array  variable  and
                             index  gives  the  name of an element within that
                             array.  Name must contain only  letters,  digits,
                             underscores, and namespace separators, and may be
                             an empty string.  Letters and digits are only the
                             standard  ASCII ones (0-9, A-Z and a-z).  Command
                             substitutions, variable substitutions, and  back-
                             slash  substitutions are performed on the charac-
                             ters of index.

              ${name}        Name is the name of a scalar  variable  or  array
                             element.   It  may contain any characters whatso-
                             ever except for close braces.   It  indicates  an
                             array  element  if  name  is  in the form "array-
                             Name(index)" where arrayName does not contain any
                             open  parenthesis characters, "(", or close brace
                             characters, "}", and index can be any sequence of
                             characters except for close brace characters.  No
                             further substitutions are  performed  during  the
                             parsing of name.

              There  may  be  any number of variable substitutions in a single
              word.  Variable substitution is not performed on words  enclosed
              in braces.

              Note  that  variables may contain character sequences other than
              those listed above, but in that case other  mechanisms  must  be
              used to access them (e.g., via the set command's single-argument
              form).

       [9] Backslash substitution.
              If a backslash ("\") appears within a word then  backslash  sub-
              stitution  occurs.   In  all cases but those described below the
              backslash is dropped and the following character is  treated  as
              an  ordinary  character  and  included in the word.  This allows
              characters such as double quotes,  close  brackets,  and  dollar
              signs  to  be  included in words without triggering special pro-
              cessing.  The following table lists the backslash sequences that
              are  handled  specially, along with the value that replaces each
              sequence.

              \a     Audible alert (bell) (Unicode U+000007).

              \b     Backspace (Unicode U+000008).

              \f     Form feed (Unicode U+00000C).

              \n     Newline (Unicode U+00000A).

              \r     Carriage-return (Unicode U+00000D).

              \t     Tab (Unicode U+000009).

              \v     Vertical tab (Unicode U+00000B).

              \<newline>whiteSpace
                     A single space character replaces the backslash, newline,
                     and  all  spaces  and tabs after the newline.  This back-
                     slash sequence is unique in that it is replaced in a sep-
                     arate  pre-pass  before  the  command is actually parsed.
                     This means that it will be replaced even when  it  occurs
                     between  braces,  and the resulting space will be treated
                     as a word separator if it is not in braces or quotes.

              \\     Backslash ("\").

              \ooo   The digits ooo (one, two, or three of them) give a eight-
                     bit  octal  value  for the Unicode character that will be
                     inserted,  in  the  range  000-377   (i.e.,   the   range
                     U+000000-U+0000FF).   The  parser  will  stop just before
                     this range overflows, or when the maximum of three digits
                     is reached.  The upper bits of the Unicode character will
                     be 0.

              \xhh   The hexadecimal digits hh (one or two of  them)  give  an
                     eight-bit  hexadecimal  value  for  the Unicode character
                     that will be inserted.  The upper  bits  of  the  Unicode
                     character  will  be 0 (i.e., the character will be in the
                     range U+000000-U+0000FF).

              \uhhhh The hexadecimal digits hhhh (one, two, three, or four  of
                     them)  give  a sixteen-bit hexadecimal value for the Uni-
                     code character that will be inserted.  The upper bits  of
                     the Unicode character will be 0 (i.e., the character will
                     be in the range U+000000-U+00FFFF).

              \Uhhhhhhhh
                     The hexadecimal digits hhhhhhhh (one up to eight of them)
                     give  a  twenty-one-bit hexadecimal value for the Unicode
                     character  that  will   be   inserted,   in   the   range
                     U+000000-U+10FFFF.  The parser will stop just before this
                     range overflows, or when the maximum of eight  digits  is
                     reached.  The upper bits of the Unicode character will be
                     0.

                     The range U+010000-U+10FFFD is reserved for the future.

              Backslash substitution is not performed  on  words  enclosed  in
              braces, except for backslash-newline as described above.

       [10] Comments.
              If  a  hash  character  ("#")  appears  at  a point where Tcl is
              expecting the first character of the first word  of  a  command,
              then  the  hash  character and the characters that follow it, up
              through the next newline, are treated as a comment and  ignored.
              The  comment  character only has significance when it appears at
              the beginning of a command.

       [11] Order of substitution.
              Each character is processed exactly once by the Tcl  interpreter
              as  part  of  creating  the words of a command.  For example, if
              variable substitution occurs then no further  substitutions  are
              performed  on  the value of the variable;  the value is inserted
              into the word verbatim.  If command substitution occurs then the
              nested  command  is  processed entirely by the recursive call to
              the Tcl interpreter; no substitutions are performed before  mak-
              ing  the recursive call and no additional substitutions are per-
              formed on the result of the nested script.

              Substitutions take place from left to right, and each  substitu-
              tion  is  evaluated completely before attempting to evaluate the
              next.  Thus, a sequence like

                     set y [set x 0][incr x][incr x]

              will always set the variable y to the value, 012.

       [12] Substitution and word boundaries.
              Substitutions do not affect the word boundaries  of  a  command,
              except  for  argument  expansion  as specified in rule [5].  For
              example, during variable substitution the entire  value  of  the
              variable  becomes  part of a single word, even if the variable's
              value contains spaces.

KEYWORDS
       backslash, command, comment, script, substitution, variable



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


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

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                                   8.6                              Tcl(1t)