From: Mike Hall <mghall@...>
Date: 2002-08-20T23:50:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs. TCL/TK?

bbense+comp.lang.ruby.Aug.19.02@telemark.stanford.edu wrote:

> - - Caution: My TCL knowledge is way out of date, I haven't really
>   looked at it closely since about 1995 or so... 

That's ancient history, in Tcl/Tk time.  :-(

> - - TCL would be great if people used it for what it was designed
>   for, a "Tool Command Language".

I think it's a fine "glue" language, too.

>   I found TCL to be somewhat painful as a general purpose
>   scripting language.

Coming from a standard UNIX environment of shell, awk, and sed,
I found Tcl/Tk a wonderful and refreshing tool to use.

Now I feel the same about Ruby.

Some work I do in Ruby, some I still do in Tcl/Tk,
some is still sh/awk/sed.  The right tool for the job.

>   In TCL everything is a string.

Yeah, in the dark ages, that was true.
Internally, it's string, list, hash, integer, floating point, proc,
and others.  Hmmm!  Like Ruby!  :-)
However, there is a fluid motion between strings and the other types.
When you need to use them like a string, they are converted.
Don't have to do an explicit ".to_s" on them.

>   In Ruby everything is a object.

In Tcl, everything is a Tcl_Object.  
Well, internally.  :-)

--
Mike Hall
http://www.enteract.com/~mghall