Tcl/TK in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference

If you need some hand-holding and are just getting started with TCL then this book is not for you. Tcl/TK in a nutshell is exactly what the title says, a desktop quick reference. Don't expect many examples or explanations. Compared to Perl / C style languages TCL is a little weird to look at and takes some getting used to. And it's easy to get tripped up if you aren't already experienced with the language. A lot of the material in the book doesn't go any deeper than the TCL man pages. So beginners, get a different book / tutorial to learn the language. If you are proficient in TCL than this book would make a great reference, but as a beginner (to TCL, not to programming) a lot of times I had to supplement what the book gave by searching the web for examples to making things clearer. But it is definitely useful for looking up rarely used / obscure commands that you may have forgotten. Even though the book lacks a lot of examples and hand holding it is very comprehensive and covers a lot of material.

The previous reviewers seemed to think that this book would teach them the way of TCL/TK and were thoroughly disappointed. But what they failed to realize that this book is meant to be nothing more then a reference book. Perhaps if they had paid attention to the product description, they would have been prepared.A thing to keep in mind, anytime an O'Reilly book has "...in a Nutshell" after the title... it's a reference book. Pure and simple. Say it with me, people. R-E-F-E-R-E-N-C-E. Not to be confused with "Master TCL/TK in 24 hours" or what have you.So, keeping that in mind, as a reference book, it does a fantastic job as the rest have stated. Makes for a good "dictionary" so to speak.

An excellent reference for Tcl, Tk, the C interfaces, Expect, [IncrTcl/Tk], Tix, TclX, BLT, OraTcl, SybTcl, & TclOdbc. Sure it doesn't cover everything that everyone will use, but that's not really possible.My only real complaint has to do with the books formatting. For most commands, the formatting is fine, but for commands with subcommands (such as string), the subcommands are unnecessarily hard to read. With that one exception, this is my favorite Tcl Book.