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Tcl Hello World Example: How To Write, Compile and Execute Tcl Program on Linux OS

Question: I would like to understand the basics of how to write and execute Tcl program on UNIX / Linux OS. Can you explain it with a simple example?

Answer: In this article, let us review very quickly how to write a basic Hello World Tcl program and execute tcl program on Linux or Unix OS.

1. Write a Hello World Tcl Program

Create the helloworld program using the Vim editor as shown below.

$ vim helloworld.tcl
#!/usr/bin/tclsh

# hello world sample program
puts "Hello, World !"

Note: Comment in Tcl starts with #.

2. Make sure Tcl interpreter is installed on your system

Make sure Tcl interpreter is installed on your system as shown below.

$ whereis tclsh
tclsh: /usr/bin/tclsh /usr/bin/tclsh8.4 /usr/share/man/man1/tclsh.1.gz

Installing tcl interpreter

If you don’t have tcl interpreter, install it as shown below.

$ sudo apt-get install tcl8.4

3. Execute Tcl Program

You can either execute using “tclsh helloworld.tcl” or “./helloworld.tcl”.

$ tclsh helloworld.tcl
Hello World!

( or )

$ chmod u+x helloworld.tcl

$ ./helloworld.tcl
Hello World!

Note: As Tcl is an interpreted language, you don’t have the compilation step similar to the C program.

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Comments on this entry are closed.

  • al mic April 9, 2010, 2:27 am
  • Al April 9, 2010, 3:35 am

    Tcl must be programming’s best kept secret. Don’t forget Tcl’s other secrets:
    Tk is a Tcl extension (most other dynamic languages load a small Tcl to access Tk)
    SQLite is a Tcl extension.
    Expect is a Tcl extension.
    Can be used as an interactive shell.
    There are a huge number of other extensions available.
    Tcl has one of the only single-file deployment models (and the best – tclkit).
    No need to install Tcl/Tk. Use tclkit for single-file install.
    Tcl is fully cross platform, same scripts run on pretty much any hardware/OS.

  • Karl September 17, 2010, 2:39 pm

    One step one to I hit enter after I type this – vim helloworld.tcl? Apparently not. I am not being successful. Can you help? I guess I need step by step when to hit enter and how to save and then run program in proper director or do I need to create a directory prior to creating the program. Sorry, this is my first work with tcl or unix.

  • SAMYNATHAN August 16, 2012, 5:09 am

    thank u…..

  • Milind Shende November 11, 2013, 7:26 am

    thanks for sharing… it was quite helpful