summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/doc/tclsh.1
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/tclsh.1')
-rw-r--r--doc/tclsh.1118
1 files changed, 118 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/tclsh.1 b/doc/tclsh.1
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2922d81
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/tclsh.1
@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+'\"
+'\" Copyright (c) 1993 The Regents of the University of California.
+'\" Copyright (c) 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
+'\"
+'\" See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
+'\" of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES.
+'\"
+'\" SCCS: @(#) tclsh.1 1.13 96/08/26 13:00:15
+'\"
+.so man.macros
+.TH tclsh 1 "" Tcl "Tcl Applications"
+.BS
+'\" Note: do not modify the .SH NAME line immediately below!
+.SH NAME
+tclsh \- Simple shell containing Tcl interpreter
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+\fBtclsh\fR ?\fIfileName arg arg ...\fR?
+.BE
+
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+.PP
+\fBTclsh\fR is a shell-like application that reads Tcl commands
+from its standard input or from a file and evaluates them.
+If invoked with no arguments then it runs interactively, reading
+Tcl commands from standard input and printing command results and
+error messages to standard output.
+It runs until the \fBexit\fR command is invoked or until it
+reaches end-of-file on its standard input.
+If there exists a file \fB.tclshrc\fR in the home directory of
+the user, \fBtclsh\fR evaluates the file as a Tcl script
+just before reading the first command from standard input.
+
+.SH "SCRIPT FILES"
+.PP
+If \fBtclsh\fR is invoked with arguments then the first argument
+is the name of a script file and any additional arguments
+are made available to the script as variables (see below).
+Instead of reading commands from standard input \fBtclsh\fR will
+read Tcl commands from the named file; \fBtclsh\fR will exit
+when it reaches the end of the file.
+There is no automatic evaluation of \fB.tclshrc\fR in this
+case, but the script file can always \fBsource\fR it if desired.
+.PP
+If you create a Tcl script in a file whose first line is
+.CS
+\fB#!/usr/local/bin/tclsh\fR
+.CE
+then you can invoke the script file directly from your shell if
+you mark the file as executable.
+This assumes that \fBtclsh\fR has been installed in the default
+location in /usr/local/bin; if it's installed somewhere else
+then you'll have to modify the above line to match.
+Many UNIX systems do not allow the \fB#!\fR line to exceed about
+30 characters in length, so be sure that the \fBtclsh\fR
+executable can be accessed with a short file name.
+.PP
+An even better approach is to start your script files with the
+following three lines:
+.CS
+\fB#!/bin/sh
+# the next line restarts using tclsh \e
+exec tclsh "$0" "$@"\fR
+.CE
+This approach has three advantages over the approach in the previous
+paragraph. First, the location of the \fBtclsh\fR binary doesn't have
+to be hard-wired into the script: it can be anywhere in your shell
+search path. Second, it gets around the 30-character file name limit
+in the previous approach.
+Third, this approach will work even if \fBtclsh\fR is
+itself a shell script (this is done on some systems in order to
+handle multiple architectures or operating systems: the \fBtclsh\fR
+script selects one of several binaries to run). The three lines
+cause both \fBsh\fR and \fBtclsh\fR to process the script, but the
+\fBexec\fR is only executed by \fBsh\fR.
+\fBsh\fR processes the script first; it treats the second
+line as a comment and executes the third line.
+The \fBexec\fR statement cause the shell to stop processing and
+instead to start up \fBtclsh\fR to reprocess the entire script.
+When \fBtclsh\fR starts up, it treats all three lines as comments,
+since the backslash at the end of the second line causes the third
+line to be treated as part of the comment on the second line.
+
+.SH "VARIABLES"
+.PP
+\fBTclsh\fR sets the following Tcl variables:
+.TP 15
+\fBargc\fR
+Contains a count of the number of \fIarg\fR arguments (0 if none),
+not including the name of the script file.
+.TP 15
+\fBargv\fR
+Contains a Tcl list whose elements are the \fIarg\fR arguments,
+in order, or an empty string if there are no \fIarg\fR arguments.
+.TP 15
+\fBargv0\fR
+Contains \fIfileName\fR if it was specified.
+Otherwise, contains the name by which \fBtclsh\fR was invoked.
+.TP 15
+\fBtcl_interactive\fR
+Contains 1 if \fBtclsh\fR is running interactively (no
+\fIfileName\fR was specified and standard input is a terminal-like
+device), 0 otherwise.
+
+.SH PROMPTS
+.PP
+When \fBtclsh\fR is invoked interactively it normally prompts for each
+command with ``\fB% \fR''. You can change the prompt by setting the
+variables \fBtcl_prompt1\fR and \fBtcl_prompt2\fR. If variable
+\fBtcl_prompt1\fR exists then it must consist of a Tcl script
+to output a prompt; instead of outputting a prompt \fBtclsh\fR
+will evaluate the script in \fBtcl_prompt1\fR.
+The variable \fBtcl_prompt2\fR is used in a similar way when
+a newline is typed but the current command isn't yet complete;
+if \fBtcl_prompt2\fR isn't set then no prompt is output for
+incomplete commands.
+
+.SH KEYWORDS
+argument, interpreter, prompt, script file, shell