Tcl (was Re: [oclug] UNIX philosophy (was Re: vim rulez...))

[Gilles J. Seguin]

"David F. Skoll" wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Jon Earle wrote:
> 
> > Last version of Tcl/Tk I used was 8.0.  It didn't have a real array
> > construct (it's version of "arrays" is like C structs) and Tk had no table
> > widget.  This meant building tables of data using Tcl/Tk was _really_
> > ugly!
> 
> > Has this changed in recent versions?
> 
> Yes and no.  Yes, there is an add-on table widget called TkTable.  No,
> Tcl still does not have real arrays (they are associative arrays, or in
> Perlspeak, hashes.)
> 
> [incr Tcl] gives Tcl an object-oriented extension, and this is good for
> building data structures.  But pure Tcl is not suitable for structured data.
> The best thing about Tcl, I think, is that the API for embedding it into
> C is very clean and well thought-out.

I agree

> I use Tcl/Tk for scripting and GUI,

The only real problem that I have with Tcl/Tk and [incr Tcl]
the language has change at the API level with the result
of keeping the source of those(Tcl/Tk) with the application.

But one of the goal was to reduce such dependency.
I can not afford timewise to port every applications written.
Array is one of those peculiar change.
And having the application portable.

> and C or C++ for time-consuming or complex processing.