AMG: In Tcl and in many command line programs, -- is "the switch to end all switches" (RS). See '--' in Tcl for more information on this usage.
In C and a few related languages, -- is the decrement operator. In Tcl, use [incr var -1] to decrement a variable and return its new value. To decrement and return the prior value, combine with K, e.g.:
proc K {a b} {return $a}
puts [K $var [incr var -1]]Or this weird one-liner:
puts $var[incr var -1; list]
In email, -- followed by space then newline is the traditional separator between an email message and the signature.
In many command line programs (typically not Tcl programs), -- is the prefix for GNU-style long options, those being options (switches) spelled out with names longer than a single character. For example, "ls --almost-all" is a more verbose way to say "ls -A".