Purpose: discuss ways of getting data into the Tcl interpreter
There are many ways to get data into a Tcl interpreter for evaluation.
One of the most common ways is to edit a file, then to invoke a Tcl based interpreter with the name of the file. Tcl reads the file, interpreting the results and producing output when required.
Developers used to a GUI development environment frequently ask if there are GUI based integrated development environments for Tcl. There are a number of such products, with varying states of usefulness. I typically refer people to http://www.purl.org/net/tcl-faq/part4.html to find the ones I have cataloged, but there are any number of Tcl Resource Catalogs available.
Another way that some people enter Tcl commands, while experimenting, is by invoking a Tcl interpreter without any input file. This starts up a relatively simple interface where one can type in a command at a time and the interpreter will display the results.
There are some minimal niceities available when doing this.
... talk about command line history, abbreviated commands, unknown submitting unknown commands to the shell...
... talk about tkconsole ....