Tcl/Tk in A Nutshell

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, not so good for beginners   June 17, 2004
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

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.   March 16, 2004
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

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.


it's a nutshell book ... stuff you can get online   December 23, 2003
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

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.