'''Question:''' Why is TCL syntax so weird?

'''Answer:''' it's not. Everything else is weird.

Okay, you might not buy this. I don't either, completely. The point is, though, that TCL may be the only language I've ever heard of where there are no special/built-in functions.

There is no Pascal '''println''' that allows variable arguments when every other function has a fixed number of arguments.

[LV] On the other hand, variable arguments are just fine in Tcl.
It is just that the default output command, [puts], requires one string as its output format.  If someone wanted to write something like println, they could write a proc that would collect its arguments, hand them to format and then to puts.

There is no C '''for''' that has three arguments separated by semi-colons where each argument can have any number of operations separated by commas.

[LV] There are, however, several looping constructs that you can do looping - for instance, where in C you would write:

 for (i=0;i<10;i++) {
     printf("x is %s\n", x);
 }

in tcl you would write:

 [for] {[set] x 0} {$x<10} {[incr] x} {
            puts "x is $x"
          }

It is real simple: a '''command''' followed by zero or more '''arguments'''. That's it.

Unfortunately, that means a simple assignment statement has to be written funny. Trying to say
    a = "12345"
would try to run the '''a''' command, which probably doesn't exist. If you try to use Perl-like syntax, you might try
   $a = "12345"
which would also fail because the parser would try to get the value of a variable called '''a''' and treat that as the command name (see [Substituting Command Names]).

[LV] Unless you play games with [Salt and Sugar], which allows you to write assignments in more unusual ways.


So, TCL has a '''set''' command that takes two arguments: the first is the name of a variable and the second is the value.

I just think it's weird because everything else has special cases.

[LV] other languages use set - csh for instance, which apparently provides a number of influences on Tcl.  The original BASIC required a syntax like:

let a = 1

which is even worse!

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