Introduction
Origins of Tcl • Exploring the benefits of Tcl in the digital design flow • Internet resources for problem solving and sharing solutions • Tcl book recommendations • Reference materials for the language • A sample application
Getting Started
Running Tcl Shell in UNIX or Windows • Experimenting with commands in the shell • Creating and running a script file • Variables and substitution • Launching other commands • Command substitution • Structure of a Tcl command • Quoting • Reading the keyboard
The basics of Tcl
More on substitution and quoting • Tcl grammar rules • Comments • Some common commands • Lists and strings • Launching other commands using exec • Environment variables • File manipulation
Creating Real Programs
Commands for flow control • Procedures and arguments • Default arguments • Scope • Return values • Opening Files • Reading and writing files • Formatting data as text • Commands for calculation • Manipulating strings • Manipulating lists • Array variables • Global and uplevel references • Introspection with the info command
Pattern Matching
Glob-style matching • Regular expressions - background • Using regular expressions to analyse text • Details of regular expression syntax • Grouping, capture and back-references • Regexp substitution • A significant example, analysing HDL source code
Interacting with other applications
Opening a command pipeline • File buffering and blocking • File event handling and the Tcl event loop • Examples of interaction with typical EDA tools
