The Tcl language and Tk graphical toolkit are simple and powerful building blocks for custom applications. The Tcl/Tk combination is increasingly popular because it lets you produce sophisticated graphical interfaces with a few easy commands, develop and change scripts quickly, and conveniently tie together existing utilities or programming libraries. One of the attractive features of Tcl/Tk is the wide variety of commands, many offering a wealth of options. Most of the things you'd like to do have been anticipated by the language's creator, John Ousterhout, or one of the developers of Tcl/Tk's many powerful extensions. Thus, you'll find that a command or option probably exists to provide just what you need. And that's why it's valuable to have a quick reference that briefly describes every command and option in the core Tcl/Tk distribution as well as the most popular extensions. Keep this book on your desk as you write scripts, and you'll be able to find almost instantly the particular option you need. Most chapters consist of alphabetical listings. Since Tk and mega-widget packages break down commands by widget, the chapters on these topics are organized by widget along with a section of core commands where appropriate. Contents include:

• Core Tcl and Tk commands and Tk widgets

• C interface (prototypes)

• Expect

• [incr Tcl] and [incr Tk]

• Tix

• TclX

• BLT

• Oratcl, SybTcl, and Tclodbc

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 12 Ratings

it's a nutshell book ... stuff you can get online - 2003-12-23
Reviewer Rating:
this is the tcl book i keep handiest, even though it doesn't offer me much of anything beyond the manual pages. what it does offer is a compendium of tcl, tk, expect, tix, blt, itcl, itk, tclx, and the like's references.

i've always been disappointed in tcl's online documentation. you can easily reproduce the lion's share of this book by just printing out the manual pages. however, having them bound and handy can be a relief. it does include some sample code (which you can typically find online), adding some value.

it's a nutshell book, though, and nutshell books are typically like this. o'reilly's had this series for years and they've always been of questionable value for some people (myself included). you wont learn a language this way, you wont even improve your programming this way, you'll just have a handy printed reference manual. i haven't yet found it to be incorrect (but i didn't go looking), so that's got to say something.

don't pay full price for this one.

Disorganized, incomplete, and unfriendly - 2004-06-28
Reviewer Rating:
The book has lots of information but one has to go through lots to loops to get to where the information should be and then it may not be there.

E.g., the index has no mention of the 'wm' command--one that I often encounter.

E.g., another book implies that there is a canvas command 'delete all'. After I finally got to page 61, I found the 'delete' command but NOT any hint that one can use the 'all' command to delete all the objects on the canvas.

Another example, even though the book purports to cover TK--the visual side of the language--I find just one chart, .

Needless to say, there are very few examples.

Good reference for Tcl/Tk 8.0, but now outdated - 2005-09-08
Reviewer Rating:
This book really needs to be updated for the latest version of Tcl/Tk, as there have been a number of important additions since it was published in 1999. For example, all the new string commands and regular expression enhancements added in 8.1, the new file operations added in 8.3, and the new list commands added in 8.4, not to mention all the new Tk widgets (e.g. spinbox, panedwindow). To learn about all the new features, I'd recommend that you get the latest version of Brent Welch's "Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk" instead. The documentation that comes with Tcl/Tk is the ultimate authority, and is basically what this Nutshell book consists of, albeit for the old 8.0 version. It's basically just a copy of the old manual pages.

I think this book is just too old to be useful anymore, especailly since if you have Tcl/Tk installed then you already have all the current documentation. And there are virtually no examples given. The Chapter on The Tcl C Interface is basically the contents of the tcl.h header file. One reason I give it 2 stars instead of just 1 is that it does have some chapters on some popular Tcl/Tk extensions, like Expect, Tclx, Tix and Blt, even though they're pretty much just the manual pages for those extensions.

Good reference, not so good for beginners - 2004-06-17
Reviewer Rating:
If you need some hand-holding and are just getting started with TCL then this book is not for you. Tcl/TK in a nutshell is exactly what the title says, a desktop quick reference.
Don't expect many examples or explanations.

Compared to Perl / C style languages TCL is a little weird to look at and takes some getting used to. And it's easy to get tripped up if you aren't already experienced with the language. A lot of the material in the book doesn't go any deeper than the TCL man pages. So beginners, get a different book / tutorial to learn the language.

If you are proficient in TCL than this book would make a great reference, but as a beginner (to TCL, not to programming) a lot of times I had to supplement what the book gave by searching the web for examples to making things clearer. But it is definitely useful for looking up rarely used / obscure commands that you may have forgotten.

Even though the book lacks a lot of examples and hand holding it is very comprehensive and covers a lot of material.

Good reference, but don't expect anything else. - 2004-03-16
Reviewer Rating:
As a reference goes, this is pretty good. I've noticed a certain hit or miss aspect of the O'Reilly Nutshell series. This one is more of a hit for me personally. Still, I'm already bumping into things I wish this book covered. stooop, for one thing. There isn't much here that you won't find in the online documentation, but it can be very nice to have a paper copy.

Basically, this book was what I was expecting it to be. Nothing more, nothing less.

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