Book Image

Tcl/Tk 8.5 Programming Cookbook

Book Image

Tcl/Tk 8.5 Programming Cookbook

Overview of this book

With Tcl/Tk, you can create full-featured cross-platform applications in a simple and easy-to-understand way without any expensive development package; the only tools required are a simple text editor and your imagination. This practical cookbook will help you to efficiently interact with editors, debuggers, and shell type interactive programs using Tcl/Tk 8. This cookbook will comprehensively guide you through practical implementation of Tcl/Tk 8.5 commands and tools. This book will take you through all the steps needed to become a productive programmer in Tcl/Tk 8. Right from guiding you through the basics to creating a stand-alone application, it provides complete explanation of all the steps along with handy tips and tricks. The book begins with an introduction to the Tcl shell, syntax, variables, and programming best practices in the language. It then explores procedures and the flow of events with control constructs followed by advanced error trapping and recovery. From Chapter 4, a detailed study of string expressions and handling enables you to handle various string functions and use lists to expand the string functionality. The book then discusses in-depth the Tcl Dictionary and how to utilize it to store and retrieve data. File operations and Tk GUI handling are covered extensively along with a developing a real-world address book application to practice the concepts learned.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Tcl/Tk 8.5 Programming Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Determining the length of a string


To determine the length of a string, Tcl provides the length keyword. The length command will return a decimal string containing the number of bytes used to represent the value contained within the variable in memory. Please note that as UTF-8 uses one to three bytes for Unicode characters; the byte length will not be the same as the character length, in most circumstances. The syntax of length is as follows:

string length variable

How to do it…

In the following example, we will determine the byte length of a string of characters. Return values from the commands are provided for clarity. Enter the following command:

% set input "The end is nigh"
The end is nigh
% string length $input
15

How it works…

As you can see in the example, the string command has read the input and returned a value of 15.