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Tcl/Tk 9.1

304 points · 144 comments · dmux

  1. gbacon · · focus · HN ↗
    The little language that could.

    “Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like routers.” (Larry Wall, October 1997)

    1. olexsmir · · focus · HN ↗
      They don't make them like they used to
    2. bch · · focus · HN ↗
      Tkinter[0] was apparently released in 1994, so mildly interesting he didn't say "Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like other programming languages."

      [0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grokipedia.com&#x2F;page&#x2F;Tkinter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grokipedia.com&#x2F;page&#x2F;Tkinter

      1. kevin_thibedeau · · focus · HN ↗
        It&#x27;s not really ported. tkinter just builds a full Tcl interpreter as a Python extension and passes command strings over to it. This is the use case Tcl was designed for. You can get access to the underlying Tcl instance and issue non-Tk commands.
        1. bch · · focus · HN ↗
          Technically correct (the best kind of &quot;correct&quot;).

          My next question to myself was what hardware was running Tcl in c.1997 Cisco equipment? What porting effort was required? I understand there was some proprietary feature work for Cisco IOS, but I don&#x27;t know what architectural work was required.

          1. dkfellows · · focus · HN ↗
            Long term, the Cisco router support became the non-recursive execution engine (of Tcl 8.6) which stopped things from blowing up on the tiny stack sizes that Cisco equipment is configured with.

            And which gives us tailcalls and coroutines.

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