I have a proc that evaluates an expr and appends to a particular list locally
proc a {} {
set mylist ""
set out [expr...
lappend mylist $out
}
I want to use the "mylist" list outside of the "a" proc without declaring it as global or without returning that list from within the proc using "return mylist". How do I go about doing that. I have two use cases, Use the variable within another proc:
proc b {} {
do something with the "mylist" from proc a
}
Use case 2 :
Just use it outside the proc [Not within another proc]
The "mylist" variable only exists as long as proc a is being executed. Whenever a proc finishes, all its local variables are cleaned up.
As long as a is in progress, you can access its variables using the upvar command.
For example: if you call b from a, b can access "mylist" using:
upvar 1 mylist othervar
puts $othervar
However, it is usually better practice to pass the variable (or at least its name) between procs, or make it a global or namespace variable.
Reference: https://www.tcl-lang.org/man/tcl/TclCmd/upvar.htm
Sample code snippet:
proc foo {ref_var} {
upvar $ref_var local_var
# do some operatins
lappend local_var 20
}
proc bar {} {
set a [list 10]
puts "Before: $a"
foo a
puts "After: $a"
}
# nested proc
bar
# without proc
set c [list 30]
puts "Initial: $c"
foo c
puts "Final: $c"
Output:
Before: 10
After: 10 20
Initial: 30
Final: 30 20
Related
I am trying to execute a tcl script which makes exclusive calls to procs a and b. The two procs are not related to each other.
proc a {} {
set var1 "a"
}
proc b {} {
# Do something here with: $var1
}
# script.tcl
a
b
I do not have access to the script.tcl as well. When proc 'a' is called, I need to store the var1 somehow such that I can access it later within proc 'b' when it is called. How can I get the value of var1 in proc b? Doesn't seem like I can use 'global' and 'upvar' here?
A simple way is to define the variable in the global scope by preceding the variable name with ::
proc a {} {
set ::var1 "a"
}
proc b {} {
puts $::var1
}
Other methods would be to use the global command in each proc or to define the variable in a special namespace of its own.
Using variable instead of global offers a bit more flexibility if namespaces are involved
namespace eval n {
proc a {{value A}} {
variable var1
set var1 $value
return
}
proc b {} {
variable var1
puts "var1 is <$var1>"
}
}
n::a
n::b ;# => var1 is <A>
namespace eval n {a 42; b} ;# => var1 is <42>
puts $::var1 ;# => can't read "::var1": no such variable
So I have the following situation:
$ ls -l
-r--r----- 1.tcl
-rw-rw---- 2.tcl
$ cat 1.tcl
proc foo {args} {
puts "$bar"
}
and I need to make 1.tcl print something other than "can't read \"bar\"". In a good programming language, the obvious solution would be
$ cat > 2.tcl
set -global bar "hello, world"
foo
What would be a reasonable workaround in TCL? Unfortunately the real foo is a long function that I can't really make a copy of or sed to a temporary file at runtime.
You can do this for your specific example
$ cat 2.tcl
source 1.tcl
set bar "Hello, bar!"
# add a "global bar" command to the foo procedure
proc foo [info args foo] "global bar; [info body foo]"
foo
$ tclsh 2.tcl
Hello, bar!
Clearly this doesn't scale very well.
If the variable is simply undefined, the easiest way would be to patch the procedure with a definition:
proc foo [info args foo] "set bar \"hello, world\" ; [info body foo]"
You can also accomplish this using a read trace and a helper command. This removes the problem I mentioned above, where local assignments destroy the value you wanted to inject.
The original procedure, with an added command that sets the local variable to a value which is later printed.
proc foo args {
set bar foobar
puts "$bar"
}
% foo
foobar
Create a global variable (it doesn't matter if the name is the same or not).
set bar "hello, world"
Create a helper command that gets the name of the local variable, links to it, and assigns the value of the global variable to it. Since we already know the name we could hardcode it in the procedure, but this is more flexible.
proc readbar {name args} {
upvar 1 $name var
global bar
set var $bar
}
Add the trace to the body of the foo procedure. The trace will fire whenever the local variable bar is read, i.e. something attempts to retrieve its value. When the trace fires, the command readbar is called: it overwrites the current value of the variable with the globally set value.
proc foo [info args foo] "trace add variable bar read readbar; [info body foo]"
% foo
hello, world
If one doesn't want to pollute the namespace with the helper command, one can use an anonymous function instead:
proc foo [info args foo] [format {trace add variable bar read {apply {{name args} {
upvar 1 $name var
global bar
set var $bar
}}} ; %s} [info body foo]]
Documentation:
apply,
format,
global,
info,
proc,
puts,
set,
trace,
upvar,
Syntax of Tcl regular expressions
source 1.tcl
try {
foo
} on error {err res} {
set einfo [dict get $res -errorinfo]
if { [regexp {no such variable} $einfo] } {
puts "hello, world"
return -code 0
} else {
puts $einfo
return -code [dict get $res -code]
}
}
Tcl's procedures do not resolve variables to anything other than local variables by default. You have to explicitly ask for them to refer to something else (e.g., with global, variable or upvar). This means that it's always possible to see at a glance whether non-local things are happening, and that the script won't work.
It's possible to override this behaviour with a variable resolver, but Tcl doesn't really expose that API in its script interface. Some extensions do more. For example, it might work to use [incr Tcl] (i.e., itcl) as that does that sort of thing for variables in its objects. I can't remember if Expect also does this, or if that uses special-cased code for handling its variables.
Of course, you could get really sneaky and override the behaviour of proc.
rename proc real_proc
real_proc proc {name arguments body} {
uplevel 1 [list real_proc $name $arguments "global bar;$body"]
}
That's rather nasty though.
In the TCL code that I currently work on, the arguments in each procedure is upvar'ed to a local variable so to speak and then used. Something like this:
proc configure_XXXX { params_name_abc params_name_xyz} {
upvar $params_name_abc abc
upvar $params_name_xyz xyz
}
From here on, abc and xyz will be used to do whatever. I read the upvar TCL wiki but could not understand the advantages. I mean why cant we just use the variables that have been received as the arguments in the procedure. Could anybody please elaborate?
I mean why cant we just use the variables that have been received as the arguments in the procedure.
You can. It just gets annoying.
Typically, when you pass the name of a variable to a command, it is so that command can modify that variable. The classic examples of this are the set and incr commands, both of which take the name of a variable as their first argument.
set thisVariable $thisValue
You can do this with procedures too, but then you need to access the variable from the context of the procedure when it is a variable that is defined in the context of the caller of the procedure, which might be a namespace or might be a different local variable frame. To do that, we usually use upvar, which makes an alias from a local variable to a variable in the other context.
For example, here's a reimplementation of incr:
proc myIncr {variable {increment 1}} {
upvar 1 $variable v
set v [expr {$v + $increment}]
}
Why does writing to the local variable v cause the variable in the caller's context to be updated? Because we've aliased it (internally, it set up via a pointer to the other variable's storage structure; it's very fast once the upvar has been done). The same underlying mechanism is used for global and variable; they're all boiled down to fast variable aliases.
You could do it without, provided you use uplevel instead, but that gets rather more annoying:
proc myIncr {variable {increment 1}} {
set v [uplevel 1 [list set $variable]]
set v [expr {$v + $increment}]
uplevel 1 [list set $variable $v]
}
That's pretty nasty!
Alternatively, supposing we didn't do this at all. Then we'd need to pass the variable in by its value and then assign the result afterwards:
proc myIncr {v {increment 1}} {
set v [expr {$v + $increment}]
return $v
}
# Called like this
set foo [myIncr $foo]
Sometimes the right thing, but a totally different way of working!
One of the core principles of Tcl is that pretty much anything you can do with a standard library command (such as if or puts or incr) could also be done with a command that you wrote yourself. There are no keywords. Naturally there might be some efficiency concerns and some of the commands might need to be done in another language such as C to work right, but the semantics don't make any command special. They all just plain commands.
The upvar command will allow you to modify a variable in a block and make this modification visible from parent block.
Try this:
# a function that will modify the variable passed
proc set_upvar { varname } {
upvar 1 $varname var
puts "var was $var\n"
set var 5
puts "var is now $var\n"
}
# a function that will use the variable but that will not change it
proc set_no_upvar { var } {
puts "var was $var\n"
set var 6
puts "var is now $var\n"
}
set foo 10
# note the lack of '$' here
set_upvar foo
puts "foo is $foo\n"
set_no_upvar $foo
puts "foo is $foo\n"
As it was mentioned in comment above, it is often used for passing function arguments by reference (call by reference). A picture costs a thousand words:
proc f1 {x} {
upvar $x value
set value 0
}
proc f2 {x} {
set x 0
}
set x 1
f1 x
puts $x
set x 1
f2 x
puts $x
will result in:
$ ./call-by-ref.tcl
0
1
With upvar we changed variable x outside of function (from 1 to 0), without upvar we didn't.
Is it possible to find the procedure name by using the content of that procedure?
For example,
proc test {args} {
set varA "exam"
puts "test program"
}
Using the statement set varA, is it possible to find its procedure name test?
Because, I need to find a procedure for which i know the output [it's printing something, i need to find the procedure using that].
I tried many ways like info frame, command. But, nothing helps.
Is it possible to find the procedure name by using the content of that procedure?
Yes. You use info level 0 to get the argument words to the current procedure (or info level -1 to get its caller's argument words). The first word is the command name, as resolved in the caller's context. That might be enough, but if not, you can use namespace which inside an uplevel 1 to get the fully-qualified name.
proc foo {args} {
set name [lindex [info level 0] 0]
set FQname [uplevel 1 [list namespace which $name]]
# ...
}
Note that this does not give you the main name in all circumstances. If you're using aliases or imported commands, the name you'll get will vary. Mostly that doesn't matter too much.
With info proc, we can get the content of a procedure which may helps you in what you expect.
The following procedure will search for the given word in all the namespaces. You can change it to search in particular namespace as well. Also, the search word can also be case insensitive if altered in terms of regexp with -nocase. It will return the list of procedure names which contains the search word.
proc getProcNameByContent {searchWord} {
set resultProcList {}
set nslist [namespace children ::]; # Getting all Namespaces list
lappend nslist ::; # Adding 'global scope namespace as well
foreach ns $nslist {
if {$ns eq "::"} {
set currentScopeProcs [info proc $ns*]
} else {
set currentScopeProcs [info proc ${ns}::*]
}
foreach myProc $currentScopeProcs {
if {[regexp $searchWord [info body $myProc]]} {
puts "found in $myProc"
lappend resultProcList $myProc
}
}
}
return $resultProcList
}
Example
% proc x {} {
puts hai
}
% proc y {} {
puts hello
}
% proc z {} {
puts world
}
% namespace eval dinesh {
proc test {} {
puts "world is amazing"
}
}
%
% getProcNameByContent world
found in ::dinesh::test
found in ::z
::dinesh::test ::z
%
I have a file like this:
set position {0.50 0.50}
set visibility false
set text {ID: {entity.id}\n Value: {entity.contour_val}}
And I want to do something similar to source, but I want to use a file handle only.
My current attempt looks like this:
proc readArray {fileHandle arrayName} {
upvar $arrayName arr
set cl 0
while {! [eof $fileHandle]} {
set cl [expr "$cl + 1"]
set line [gets $fileHandle]
if [$line eq {}] continue
puts $line
namespace eval ::__esg_priv "
uplevel 1 {*}$line
"
info vars ::__esg_priv::*
foreach varPath [info vars ::__esg_priv::*] {
set varName [string map { ::__esg_priv:: "" } $varPath]
puts "Setting arr($varName) -> [set $varPath]"
set arr($varName) [set $varPath]
}
namespace delete __esg_priv
}
puts "$cl number of lines read"
}
In place of uplevel I tried many combinations of eval and quoting.
My problem is, it either fails on the lines with lists or it does not actuall set the variables.
What is the right way to do it, if the executed commands are expected to be any valid code.
An extra question would be how to properly apply error checking, which I haven't tried yet.
After a call to
readArray [open "myFile.tcl" r] arr
I expect that
parray arr
issues something like:
arr(position) = 0.50 0.50
arr(text) = ID: {entity.id}\n Value: {entity.contour_val}
arr(visibility) = false
BTW: The last line contains internal {}, which are supposed to make it into the string variables. And there is no intent to make this a dict.
This code works, but there are still some problems with it:
proc readArray {fileHandle arrayName} {
upvar $arrayName arr
set cl 0
while {! [eof $fileHandle]} {
incr cl ;# !
set line [gets $fileHandle]
if {$line eq {}} continue ;# !
puts $line
namespace eval ::__esg_priv $line ;# !
foreach varPath [info vars ::__esg_priv::*] {
set varName [string map { ::__esg_priv:: "" } $varPath]
puts "Setting arr($varName) -> [set $varPath]"
set arr($varName) [set $varPath]
}
namespace delete __esg_priv
}
puts "$cl number of lines read"
}
I've taken out a couple of lines that didn't seem necessary, and changed some lines a bit.
You don't need set cl [expr "$cl + 1"]: incr cl will do.
if [$line eq {}] continue will fail because the [...] is a command substitution. if {$line eq {}} continue (braces instead of brackets) does what you intend.
Unless you are accessing variables in another scope, you won't need uplevel. namespace eval ::__esg_priv $line will evaluate one line in the designated namespace.
I didn't change the following, but maybe you should:
set varName [string map { ::__esg_priv:: "" } $varPath] works as intended, but set varName [namespace tail $varPath] is cleaner.
Be aware that if there exists a global variable with the same name as one of the variables in your file, no namespace variable will be created; the global variable will be updated instead.
If you intend to use the value in the text variable as a dictionary, you need to remove either the \n or the braces.
According to your question title, you want to evaluate the file line by line. If that requirement can be lifted, your code could be simplified by reading the whole script in one operation and then evaluating it with a single namespace eval.
ETA
This solution is a lot more robust in that it reads the script in a sandbox (always a good idea when writing code that will execute arbitrary external code) and redefines (within that sandbox) the set command to create members in your array instead of regular variables.
proc readArray {fileHandle arrayName} {
upvar 1 $arrayName arr
set int [interp create -safe]
$int alias set apply {{name value} {
uplevel 1 [list set arr($name) $value]
}}
$int eval [read $fileHandle]
interp delete $int
}
To make it even more safe against unexpected interaction with global variables etc, look at the interp package in the Tcllib. It lets you create an interpreter that is completely empty.
Documentation: apply, continue, eof, foreach, gets, if, incr, info, interp package, interp, list, namespace, proc, puts, set, string, uplevel, upvar, while