Chapter 15

Extending Tcl

One of the greatest strengths of the Tcl package is the ease with which it can be extended. By adding your own extensions to the interpreter you can:

• Use compiled code to perform algorithms that are too computation-intensive for an interpreted language.

• Add support for devices or data formats that are not currently supported by Tcl.

• Create a rapid prototyping interpreter for an existing C language library.

• Add Tk graphics to an existing application or set of libraries.

• Create a script-driven test suite for an application or library.

Extensions can be linked with the Tcl library to create a new tclsh or wish interpreter, or they can be loaded into a running tclsh . Note that support for loading binary objects ...

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