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>1. Introduction</H1
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><EM
>VB and VBScript programmers: I know how you
feel.</EM
> Really. As a Microsoft Certified Professional in
VB6, I've been doing those languages for 7 years. I really
liked them, until I got over the hump in Tcl and started noticing
the differences in flexibility that are shown here. If Tcl looks
completely alien to you, and you wonder how in the world they
dreamed it up, hold it up beside a piece of C code, or a UNIX shell
script. I think those are what influenced it the most. UNIX shell
scripts are a lot more advanced than MS Windows shell scripts, even
those on NT/2000. In fact, UNIX shell scripts have a lot of the
capabilities shown here. Both Tcl and shell script are based
largely on string substitution. I chose to study Tcl over shell
scripts because Tcl code is much more verbose and English-like (and
therefore maintainable) than shell scripts, which tend to be
cryptic. Some of the shell script command names are just
punctuation alone!</P
><P
>Tcl also runs easily on the "big 4" PC
platforms (Linux, *nix, Windows, Mac) as well as some others. This
is promised by Java(tm), but delivered just as much (or more) by
Tcl. And unlike Java and VB, Tcl is free of any commercial
influences (which is true freedom, not just "free of
charge"); over the years its development path sticks
closer to what is really needed and wanted by you, its developers
and potential developers. There has been no parent company to steer
Tcl away from that and toward the company's own interests. The
most startling contrast of all between Tcl and VB is that Tcl may
even overshadow all the technical differences shown below.</P
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