expr shorthand syntax

One of the biggest complaints about Tcl is it’s verbosity for common expressions. Consider:

set sublist [lrange $list [expr {$a + 1}] [expr {$b - 1}]]

This is mitigated somewhat in list and string index and ranges expression which support the notation int+int or int-int. However, many simple, common expressions are still cumbersome.

There has been much discussion about shorthand notation for expr, however as for many things with Tcl, progress is slow or non-existent.

There is no need to suffer the same fate for Jim, though. So I implemented a trivial patch to support the syntax $(...) as a shorthand for expr. Let’s see how it looks:

. set x $(3 + 4)
7
. incr y $(7 * [incr x])
56
. set z $("bb" in {aa bb cc})
1

A lot better! Essentially avoiding one set of brackets plus the command name. Currently in Tcl, $(...) is an accidental valid expression, accessing an array named with the empty string. Giving up this is a very small price to pay for this more accessible syntax. Perhaps as Tcl grinds it’s way towards version 9.0, it could give up a tiny bit of backward compatibility for easy of use.

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)


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