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Tool command language (Tcl) is a powerful scripting language with programming features. It is available across Unix, Windows and Mac OS platforms. Tcl is used for Web and desktop applications, networking, administration, testing, rapid prototyping, scripted applications and graphical user interfaces (GUI).
Techopedia Explains Tool Command Language
Introduced in 1988 by John Ousterhout, Tcl is used for common gateway interface (CGI) scripting and serves as the Eggdrop bot scripting language. Tcl/Tk refers to a combination of Tcl and the Tk GUI toolkit.
Tcl features include:
- Complete Unicode and cross-platform usage
- Extensibility through Java and C++
- Integration with Windows GUI toolkit
- Data types, including source code, may be manipulated as strings.
- Event-driven interface to sockets and files
- Variadic function commands and interpreted language with bytecode
- Error message generation on incorrect usage by Tcl commands.
- FreeWrap TCLSH
- Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license
- Full development version
Tcl interfaces with the C language. Arrays of values that describe command arguments are passed to the command implementation functions. Digital logic simulators also include a Tcl scripting interface for Verilog, VHSIC hardware description language (VHDL) and SystemVerilog hardware language simulation. Tools like Simplified Wrapper and Interface Generator (SWIG) and ffidl automatically generate the code required to connect arbitrary C functions and Tcl runtime. Tcl scripts house command invocations as a list of words separated by whitespace and terminated by a newline or semicolon.
Major substitutions supported by Tcl are command substitution, variable substitution and backslash substitution. Additionally, there is a database access interface for Tcl scripts that supports access drivers for MySQL, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), PostgreSQL and SQLite databases.
Tcl supports extension packages for additional functionality, including GUI, terminal-based application automation and database access.
