Read a text file into a string:
proc readfile filename {
set fp [open $filename]
set res [read $fp [file size $filename]]
close $fp
set res
}Touch a file: without modifying the contents, change a file's access time to (now); create it if it doesn't exist, with 0 bytes contents:
proc touch filename {
close [open $filename a]
} ;# after Don Porter in c.l.t, brought here by RS