The Tcl Programming Language

What Hacker News says

1. bandotiMay 2025
   I highly recommend The Tcl Programming Language: A Comprehensive Guide:

   https://www.magicsplat.com/ttpl/index.html

   For those who are not aware, Tcl is actually part of standard Python distribution through TKinter.

   There are many things Tcl has built in that are quite amazing, like a robust virtual filesystem support, reflective channels, and less known these days Starpacks (stand alone runtime) that bundle sources with the binary.

   I am current working on bringing back kitcreator for an AI project that uses Tcl as a scripting environment over llama.cpp.

   https://github.com/tclmonster/kitcreator

   Roy Keene is the original author, and has done some really clever stuff here, like encrypting the VFS appended to the executable. I added compression to this. It provides some manner of obfuscating sources.

   And actually, I am also working on using tohil to compile a static Python and load it as a Tcl extension, with the goal to have standalone Python applications bundled with their sources and completely loadable from within the VFS. This will provide a means to bundle TKinter with a “frozen” Python app.

   https://github.com/tclmonster/tohil

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2. fithisuxOct 2024
   I think people should buy Ashok P. Nadkarni's

   "The TCL Programming Language"

   and they will understand why Tcl is still relevant.

   I hope he releases an update for 9.0.

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3. cartoonfoxesJan 2021
   "The TCL Programming Language" is a recent (2017) book, paired with the language docs at https://www.tcl.tk/doc/. The language itself is remarkably simple.
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4. networkedAug 2017
   >Resources and tutorials are not readily available

   I think I know all the major web resources for the language, and I agree. In terms of learning material available online Tcl is simply very much behind Perl, Python, and Ruby. If you're learning Tcl from scratch today, I'd recommend to start by following https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/tcl/ (ignore the broken syntax highlighting) and then https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/tutorial/tcltutorial.html, and playing with the REPL extenstively (I am a fan of using http://homepages.laas.fr/mallet/soft/shell/eltclsh as your REPL for how it does completion). If you want a book, there are quite a few, but most of them outdated. While I haven't read it myself, I have heard good things about the most recent, The Tcl Programming Language, and I enjoyed its author's other writing on Tcl. The man pages that Tcl comes with are a high quality reference for its commands. The Tcler's Wiki (https://tcl.wiki/) is also indispensable as a reference and a starting point for research.

   >there is no community I ran into to ask stuff

   I highly recommend the "tcl" tag on StackOverflow and #tcl on Freenode. The former has some seriously dedicated people answering StackOverflow-scoped questions. The latter is where the developers of the language hang out and suitable for more open-ended discussion.

   >Finding a test framework

   The standard for testing Tcl code is tcltest (manual: https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl/TclCmd/tcltest.htm). The best examples to learn from are in Tcllib, the language's standard library, e.g., https://core.tcl.tk/tcllib/artifact/47f195f05f695703. If you need a framework for functional testing, try Caius — http://caiusproject.com/.

   >linting mechanisms

   There are several linters for Tcl; see the list at https://tcl.wiki/3162. At one point I tried using ttclcheck because it implements static type checking, but never stuck with it or any other linter. This may be due to Tcl's sparse syntax and highly dynamic nature, because I do use linters and style checkers for other languages.

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5. teleforceJan 2022
   This is the latest book on Tcl (does not cover Tk) by one of the active members of Tcl community.

   The Tcl Programming Language: A Comprehensive Guide:

   https://www.magicsplat.com/ttpl/index.html

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6. dmuxApr 2020
   I've been interested in the Tcl language since 2010 or so but have only written small scripts up to this point in time. I decided it was finally time to dive in so I've been working my way through "The Tcl Programming Language: A Comprehensive Guide" by Ashok P. Nadkarni as well as learning about the Naviserver ecosystem.
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