Changes in Tcl/Tk 8.1

Released April 29, 1999

New packages

• dde 1.0 (Windows)
• msgcat 1.0
• opt 0.4

New Tcl commands

• encoding

New Tcl subcommands

• package present
• string totitle

Expanded syntax/new options

fconfigure channel ?... -encoding ...?

New Tcl global variables

• tcl_platform(user)

Changed behavior

Characters are now conceptually Unicode characters, not 8-bit characters in whatever the local machine encoding happens to be.

\ooo, \xhh, and \uhhhh escapes indicate Unicode character values.

[format %c] converts to Unicode; no longer limited to 8 bits.

The Windows registry key/value which holds the root installation directory for Tcl/Tk changed (again!). To retrieve that directory from the Windows registry, use the Tcl command

 registry get HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Scriptics\\Tcl\\[info tclversion] Root

Advanced regular expressions. See regexp(n). The changes result in incompatibilities at the C API as well as potential incompatibilities in regular expressions.

Expanded scan functionality, including XPG3. See scan(n).

New C-API's

Tcl_SaveResult, Tcl_RestoreResult, Tcl_DiscardResult.

Use these if you have to use the interpreter result for communication with a Tcl script (f.e. called from the C-level), but don't want to trash the current result as your caller might rely on it.

AK

Donald Porter