Some variable names in my program are constructed from inputs of user so they may contain any symbols. Some symbols are treated as special by interpreter e.g. $,#, .... The problems concerning that symbols were solved by adding open brace on the beginning of constructed variable name and close brace at the end of it. But now another problem arises when the name of variable contains curly closing brace.
set "a{}" text
puts $a{}
puts ${a{}}
None of tow puts work here. How can I print the value of variable a{} and is there any known method for dealing with special symbols in TCL?
From the manual:
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).
Use set
puts [set "a{}"]
the $ way is restricted, set is not
Related
I am still confused about the usage of the bracket i.e () [] and {} use in Tcl. I always get caught out using the wrong bracket, having missed brackets when it was required to use them or having used too many of them. Besides this, I am also getting confused by Tcl giving me different result depending on presence or absence of space character (in math expression) and also if I have used more than one space character in succession.
Can someone please give me the basic rules that I must keep in mind to get out of this mess. Brackets have always been simple to use in C and some other languages but here they are totally different.
At the level you're looking at, Tcl is very different to any other language you've ever worked with. The heart of Tcl is defined by the Tcl(n) manual page, which states that (among other things):
Whitespace separates words. Every command takes its arguments as a sequence of words. Newlines and semicolons separate command calls; they're totally equivalent, but good style is to use a newline instead of a semicolon.
{braces} are used mainly for quoting text so that it is passed to commands with no substitutions or word separation performed on it. They nest properly. Braces are also used after $ to do variable substitution in a few cases: that's a rare use.
"double quotes" are used for quoting text so that it is passed to commands with substitutions applied, but no word separation.
[brackets] are a command substitution. They are replaced with the result of running the script inside the bracket. The script is usually a single command.
(parentheses) only have one base language use: for (associative) array elements. Thus, $a(b) is a variable substitution that will use the value of the b element in the a array.
The rest of what people call Tcl is really just a standard library, a set of commands to get you started. Some are fundamental. For example:
if is a conditional command, evaluating a branch (a script) if a condition is true. In order for this to be meaningful, the branch has to be not evaluated until the condition has been evaluated and tested; that pretty much requires putting it in braces.
while is a looping command, and not only do you want to brace its body (that's probably going to be evaluated over and over) but you also want to put the condition expression in braces as well as you definitely want that to be reevaluated each time round the loop.
proc is a command that makes your own custom commands. The body of the procedure definitely is something you want to evaluate later; it goes in braces.
expr is a general expression evaluation command. Under all normal circumstances, you'll want to put its expression in braces so that the code can be compiled and won't have double substitution problems. Note that expressions often make heavy use of parentheses: they have additional meanings in expression syntax. In particular, apart from being array element lookups, they're also used for function calls and grouping.
Note that if and while also use that same expression evaluation engine. They just use the result of the expression to decide what to do.
Scoping is a matter for commands to decide. The usual commands for dealing with introducing a scope are proc and namespace eval. This is nothing like C, C++, Java, C#, or Javascript; they have different rules. Variables are local to their procedure unless you explicitly say otherwise.
The community practice is to do calls like this:
if { $foo(bar) > (17 + $grill) * 7 } {
# This is a comment; it lasts to the end of the line
puts "the foobar $foo(bar) is too large"
set foo(bar) [ComputeSmallerValue $grill]
}
That is, barewords (if and puts) are unquoted, expressions and inner scripts are brace-quoted, parentheses are used where meaningful but most for arrays and expressions, whitespace separates all words, inner scripts are indented (usually by 4) for clarity (it doesn't have semantic meaning, but it sure helps with reading), and “blocks” use egyptian braces so that you don't have to add backslashes all over the place.
You don't have to follow these rules (they're guidelines, not the law) but they make your life easier if you do. Sometimes you do need to break the rules, but then you should know to be careful.
You cannot compare Tcl to C. In C, {} defines scope. In Tcl, {} is a grouping operator.
In Tcl, {} may group a string:
{hello world}
Or a list:
{a b c d e f g h}
Or a script:
{
puts -nonewline {hello }
puts world\n
}
Every command is simply a series of groups (which may be a word, a list,
an expression or a script):
{if} {true} { puts "hello\n" }
Of course, you don't need to put braces around every word,
but you do need braces to enclose a script:
if true { puts hello\n }
Generally, for the if statement, not bracing the expression is a bad idea,
so this is better:
if { true } { puts hello\n }
This simple rule creates Tcl's remarkably simple syntax. Every command is simply
a series of groups, whether a word, an expression, a list or script:
if expr script
while expr script
proc name argument-list script
puts string
for initialization condition nextloop script
The one important thing to remember is whenever an expression is wanted, it
should be enclosed within braces in order to prevent early substitution. e.g.:
set i 0
while { $i < 10 } {
incr i
}
The square brackets, [], are replaced with the output of a command enclosed
by the square brackets:
set output [expr {2**5}]
Parentheses are used within expressions as usual:
set output [expr {(2**5)+2}]
And for arrays:
set i 0
while { $i < 5 } {
set output($i) [expr {2**$i}]
incr i
}
parray output
I am a newbie in TCL Programming. I was having confusion about curly braces, answer to this question tcl curly braces cleared most of my doubts.
I can understand $var, {var}, and {$var}, But recently I came across another use of curly braces, ${var}. How is this interpreted by TCL?
I have seen this is used when accessing variables in namespaces when namespaces name is in variable.
for example:
set x myNamespace ;#myNamespace is name of namespace
puts [set ${x}::var1] ;#var1 is variable in the namespace
It gives error when you don't use curly braces around 'x'.
And I also don't understand the difference between {a b c} and [list a b c], what is the difference in result of interpretation of these two commands by TCL interpretation.
elaborated explanation would be highly appreciated.
See rule 8 of the manual. It allows you to have variable names that might get mis-interpreted. For instance:
% set dotted.name 1
1
% puts $dotted.name
can't read "dotted": no such variable
% puts ${dotted.name}
1
Read section 8 carefully as it actually explains all this quite explicitly.
Update to answer edited question
In the example you provide using a namespace name in a variable you must consider section 8 part 1: a variable name includes letters, digits, underscores and namespace separators. This means that x::var1 is a valid variable name. So $x::var1 will attempt to dereference the var1 variable in the x namespace. As this is not what you meant, you must dereference your x variable separately. There are two ways to do this. You can either use the set command or the dollar operator.
set x myNamespace
puts [set ${x}::var1]
puts [set [set x]::var1]
The two puts statements are equivalent here with the second version showing an explicit separate pass to obtain the value of the x variable which is then substituted into the expression for the outer set command. The same occurs in the first version but just uses the grouping operator to restrict the effect of the dollar to the x variable name.
I am declaring a array in TCL say
set JDSU-12-1(key) element
parray JDSU-12-1
I am getting error saying JDSU is not a array
Even simple puts statement is not working
% puts $JDSU-12-1(key)
can't read "JDSU": no such variable
Is there any way i can declare array name with hyphen. I know _ works in array but not sure about hyphen
You can use special characters in Tcl variable names. You need the braces for those though:
% puts ${JDSU-12-1(key)}
element
You can even use $:
% set \$word "Hello world" ;# Or set {$word} "Hello world"
% puts ${$word}
Hello world
EDIT: Some reference:
beedub.com (Emphasis mine)
The set command is used to assign a value to a variable. It takes two arguments: the first is the name of the variable and the second is the value. Variable names can be any length, and case is significant. In fact, you can use any character in a variable name.
You can use almost any character for the name of a variable in Tcl — the only restrictions relate to :: as that is a namespace separator, and ( as that is used for arrays — but the $ syntax is more restrictive; the name it accepts (without using the ${…} form) has to consist of just ASCII letters, ASCII digits, underscores or namespace separators. Dashes aren't on that list.
The standard (and simplest) way of reading from a variable with a “weird” name is to use set with only one argument, as that happily accepts any legal variable name at all:
puts "the element is '[set JDSU-12-1(key)]'"
However, if you're doing this a lot it is actually easier to make an alias to the (array) variable name:
upvar 0 JDSU-12-1 theArray
puts "the element is $theArray(key)"
That's exactly how parray does it, though it uses upvar 1 because it is aliasing to a variable in the calling scope and not in the current scope.
Although you can use such special characters, you can only use a few when you try to access variables with $varname.
To quote the relevant section from the manual:
$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 separators (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 backslash substitutions are performed on the characters of index.
${name}
Name is the name of a scalar variable or array element. It may contain any characters whatsoever except for close braces. It indicates an array element if name is in the form “arrayName(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).
I want to empathis the last paragraph a bit:
You are always able to read any variable with set varname:
set JDSU-12-1(key) element
puts [set JDSU-12-1(key)]
Unlike the ${varname} access, you can substitute a part of the variable name (in your case the array key), the entire variable, while set k "key"; puts ${JDSU-12-1($k)} does not work.
You can easily do that:
set set-var "test"
while accessing so ${set-var}
Like in most other programming languages, TCL variable must be alphanumeric starting with letter (A to Z, or _). Hyphen or dash (-) is not permitted as part of variable name, otherwise it would be confused with arithmetic minus or subtraction: there would be no difference between $x-1 as variable with name "x-1" or $x-1 as variable x minus 1.
Try this :)
subst $\{[subst ${conn}](phan)\}
Which version are you working ??
my tcl works.
% set JDSU-12-1(key) element
element
% parray JDSU-12-1
JDSU-12-1(key) = element
I am looking to use the # symbol which is the symbol to indicate that everything following is going to be a comment in a variable value. So, I would like to write the following:
set Dev1_Number 1#
set Dev2_Number 2#
But the program only recognizes 1 and 2 as values that can be placed the memory location of the variable. Is there anyway to get around that?
Tcl comments only occur when the comment character is the first character of a command word
(http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.5/TclCmd/Tcl.htm#M29). You'll see code with end-of-line comments preceded by a semicolon
set foo bar ;# this is a comment
set foo bar # this is an error!
That's not the case in your example. In your example, the hash is merely data.
Your comments indicate your editor is making an incorrect assumptions about Tcl syntax. What editor are you using?
If you are concerned, you can "force" the hash to be part of the value by using quotes
set Dev1_Number "1#"
set Dev1_Number {1#}
Use backslash character, It escapes the original meaning of that character.
set a 3\#
puts "a=$a"
output: a=3
In early Tcl versions, was the comment command (#anything) treated exactly as a normal command (parsed) with the only exception that the arguments weren't sent anywhere? So you could do this...
% # {
comment
}
...but not this:
% # remember to initialize $width here
can't read "width": no such variable
% # a comment [with brackets] here
invalid command name "with"
In what version(s) did it change to completely ignore everything after the # character to the end of line?
The oldest released version of Tcl on sourceforge is 2.1. From the manpage in that tarball:
COMMENTS
If the first non-blank character in a command is #, then everything
from the # up through the next newline character is treated as
a comment and ignored.
So; no, for all practical purposes, comments are and have always been special syntax, not a regular tcl command.
Edit, re some comments (meta-comments?)
one of the reasons why comments aren't regular commands is because it provides an easy out for matching curly braces when you don't want them to match. Suppose you wanted to write a proc that prints a single close brace.
proc writeBrace {} {
puts "}"
}
unfortunately, the braces are no longer matched, and tcl sees, as the body of the proc puts ", since thats whats between the open brace and the matching close brace. the fix is easy:
proc writeBrace {} {
# match the brace below: {
puts "}"
}
now, the number of open and close braces is matched in the proc body. remember, braces are matched before tcl tries to parse a proc body, it's just a string during argument parsing, not tcl code.
The rules do not state that every character after # is ignored, its a little bit more tricky than that.
This page on the Tcl'ers wiki explains the pitfalls of comment syntax in depth, so i won't repeat all of this here:
http://wiki.tcl.tk/462
Basically its an order of evaluation issue, the braces are used for grouping first, before the commands are looked at.