Version 1 of lindex forward compatibility

Originated by KMG 3-Sep-2005

For those of us who for various reasons cannot move up to 8.4, it's useful to:

have access to some of the enhancements
be able to write code that will be forward compatible and won't need rewriting to gain performance or syntax improvements when run on post-8.3 Tcl
have tools to help us back-port to useful stuff to 8.3 (caveat emptor!)

Here is an implementation for pre-Tcl8.4 that supports the multiple index extension. This implementation passes all of the reference test cases on the 8.4 help page for 'lindex'.

I tend to put it in a file lindex.tcl bracketed inside the following predicate:

 if { $tcl_version < 8.4  } {
 }

Here t'is:

 # Hide the default lindex command
 rename lindex _lindex

 # Define the new command
 proc lindex { theList args } {

     switch -exact [llength $args] {
         0 {
             # lindex l  (get l)
             return $theList
         }

         1 {
             # lindex l i        (get i'th element of l)
             # lindex l {}       (get l)
             # lindex l {i j k}  (get the k'th element of the j'th element of the i'th element of l)
             set indexList [_lindex $args 0]
             switch -exact [llength $indexList] {
                 0 {
                     # lindex l {}
                     return $theList
                 }

                 1 {
                     # lindex l i
                     # lindex l {i}
                     return [_lindex $theList $indexList]
                 }

                 default {
                     # lindex l {i j k}  (get the k'th element of the j'th element of the i'th element of l)
                     set index   [_lindex $indexList 0]
                     set subList [_lindex $theList $index]
                     return [lindex $subList [lrange $indexList 1 end]]
                 }
             }
         }

         default {
             # lindex l i j k
             set indexList $args
             set index   [_lindex $indexList 0]
             set subList [_lindex $theList $index]
             return [lindex $subList [lrange $indexList 1 end]]
         }
     }

     return $theList
 }