Re: [TCLCORE] Tcl future - expr shorthand syntax

[Donal K. F. <don...@ma...>]

On 17/05/2011 17:20, Brian Griffin wrote:
> Assuming *all* Tcl/Tk commands that are looking for numbers call
> Tcl_GetIntFromObj(interp, objPtr, intPtr) or similar, would it be
> reasonable if these calls all performed an [expr objPtr]?  Then one
> could write:
>
> 	set val [lindex $ra {$j + 1}]
> or
> 	set val [lindex $ra {$j + $i}]
> or
> 	set val [string range $str 0 {$n / 2}]
>
> I would think this would be very tclish.

But it would be difficult to compile the simple existing cases like:

    set val [lindex $ra $j]

That difficulty of compilation is a symptom of the semantics being a
mess. Yes, we could have done this originally (and everyone would be
writing {$j} in that case) but that opportunity is long gone.

Donal.