That's I, Ivan Shmakov.

I'd like to use [Tcl] for the following.

'''Rapid prototyping'''
Sometimes, you have a charming idea and need to check whether it works
before you've become completely disappointed in it.  There, [Tcl] allows
you to rapidly develop the code to prove its usefulness.

However, after the idea is proven to be worthwhile, the code is usually
to be rewritten in some compiled language (e. g. [C]) for the sake of
efficiency.  At that point, it would be good to leave the interface
untouched.  It's the point to make the interface ''consistent'' with the
rest of the system from the very beginning.  That's why I've written
[gnuerr] and an Argp-like command-line parser (yet to be posted.)

Having uniform user interface is also good for the user -- does anyone
really want to learn a different [CLI] for each of the tools one use?

'''Tool Control Language'''
While you develop a tool to perform some number-crunching, processing
tens and hundreds of megabytes of data per run, a compiled language
usually couldn't be jumped over if the speed matters.  However, a
complex application usually requires a complex mean of control.  There,
[Tcl] is the language which is ready to be linked with your application.

'''Scripting language'''
Most of the time, I use Bash for doing every day small tasks.  When I
feel being too constrained with it, I switch to [Tcl].  Also, [Tcl] is
my language of choice when I need to build a simple user interface
around some library, such as DjVuLibre [http://djvu.sourceforge.net/],
or Mapx [http://geospatialmethods.org/mapx/].  (In fact, I've written
bindings for both, and even a simple '''.djvu'''-viewer in [Tcl]; yet to
be published for the wide audience.)

To perform some tasks with my mail and news archives, I've written some
scripts, based on the '''rfc822::headers''' package presented in
[Reading and parsing RFC 822 headers].  The package could be used to
inspect Debian '''status''' or '''Package''' files as well.

There's the '''rfc1036::parse''' package as well, providing better
support for the news article headers.  It could be found on the
[Parsing RFC 1036 headers] page.

Mostly, I'm using [Tcl] without [Tk] (i. e. to write [CLI] applications,
not [GUI]).  One of my Tk applications is
[A Simple Shot 'em Up in Tcl/Tk].

----

 string map {
     " at " @ " dot " .
     a b b c c d d e e f f g g h h i i j j k k l l m m n
     n o o p p q q r r s s t t u u v v w w x x y y z z a
 } "huzm at sgdnqx dot zrt dot qt"

----

[Category Person]