Tcl '''bytecode''' is the instruction set targeted by [TAL] ** Documentation ** `$[tcl_traceExec]`: ** Reading ** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bytecode%|%Wikipedia]: ** See Also ** [Parsing, Bytecodes and Execution]: [Playing bytecode]: [Brute force meets Goedel]: [Proc to bytecodes: when, how does it happen]: [Commands affecting Bytecoding]: [The anatomy of a bytecoded command]: [Why compile to bytecode]: [bytecode dissasembly and/or examination]: [script compilation]: ** Why Byte-Coded Commands Can Be Faster Than C-Coded Commands ** Byte-Coded commands are sometimes faster than commands implemented in an external language like [C]. [MS], [Tcl Chatroom], 2013-12-31, offered these reasons: 1. Byte-coded commands access local variables directly, whereas commands implemented in C have to resolve them at runtime. 1. Dispatch to an external command is slower than dispatch to a byte-coded command 1. Often, only the most frequently-used code-paths of a command are byte-coded, and corner cases fall back to the C implementation of the command. <>Internals