On my PC, from Windows, I run a tcl script file with the following one line code:
exec del "c:/rubish.tcl"
The file 'rubish.tcl' DOES get deleted, but the trouble is:
the PC goes back to the DOS environment (i.e. a black screen!), then it comes back to Windows again.
My enquiry is: is it possible to run the 'exec' command shown as above WITHOUT showing the DOS black screen?
You can change this behavior by modifying the .PIF file for MS-DOS so that it does not use full-screen mode.
-Scott Stanton
Another way to call exec
It wasn't obvious to me either how to get native DOS window commands to work and it sometimes hung on me as well. I recently got it working, however...
exec cmd.exe >&@stdout <@stdin /c dir
will do the directory command for the current directory. Check out the Windows help for the switches available under cmd.exe. "/c" tells it to execute the command and then exit. "/k" tells it to execute the command and keep the DOS command interpreter active. (Note that cmd.exe is the name of the MS-DOS interpreter on Windows NT.)
-Robert Philpott
Only Call exec on 32-bit Applications
Tcl 7.6 and Tk 4.2 seem to have solved the following problem. (Thanks to Colin Stevens.)
Tcl/TK for Win32 is really rotten at doing an exec on DOS mode programs. This includes any of the DOS-like commands of the Win95 shell! If you use exec with any of the DOS mode commands, the command might execute but control will never be returned to the WISH shell.
However, 32 bit programs work just fine with WISH. To see what I mean, try the following command from the WISH console:
exec notepad
This command will run the Windows notepad editor and return control to WISH after the notepad program is exited. If you want to run notepad and return control immediately to WISH just use:
exec notepad &
This behavior is identical to the UNIX versions of Tcl/TK.
So, the moral of the story is:
Only "exec" 32 bit programs with the Win32 version of Tcl/TK.
-Dennis R. LaBelle
B-3: Puts bugs
The following Tcl procedure may fail on Windows NT, depending on the amount of data written to the file:
proc testPuts { fileName output times } {
set fileID [ open $fileName w ]
for { set i 0 } { $i < $times } { incr i } {
puts $fileID $output
}
close $fileID
}
When it fails, there are only a couple of characters in the output file (basically garbage). The Tcl error reports back:
error writing "fileX": No error
For example, if I call:
testPuts {C:/TestFile} {HI THERE} 455
it works perfectly well. However, if I call:
testPuts {C:/TestFile} {HI THERE} 456
it fails.
You can work around this bug by flushing the file descriptor after each
puts call, like the following:
proc testPuts { fileName output times } {
set fileID [ open $fileName w ]
for { set i 0 } { $i < $times } { incr i } {
puts $fileID $output
flush $fileID
}
close $fileID
}
The big question is whether this is a bug in Tcl or Windows NT 3.51.
Has anyone seen this before or have any related information? If it is
a bug in Windows NT, will Tcl7.5b2 handle this?
-Brian L. Rubow
B-4: fileevent only supports sockets under Windows
Fileevents are supported on Win32 platforms for sockets only. We have not yet found a way to discern when a file has more input than was already consumed. Any help or ideas will be gratefully accepted. I believe fileevent does not work reliably for pipes either, on Win32 platforms. I know that fileevent does work reliably for sockets.
Two possible solutions:
-
"file size
" works fine on NT, so you could poll for file size changes on the log file and read the new data as it comes in. - You could create a server socket in the tcl process and read from that in an event driven manner. Then, you could create a small program (written in C?) that connects to the socket. The subprogram polls for file size changes on the log or does a blocking read, and when there is data it writes it on the socket.
-Jacob Levy
B-5: winfo interps and send fails on Windows
Unfortunately, neither "winfo interp", nor "send" are implemented in any of the Tk for Windows releases. Hopefully this will be available in the next release.
-Scott Stanton
B-6: You need at least 256 colors and may have problems with more than 256
A number of people have reported that wish simply won't work unless you set your screen resolution to have at least 256 colors and preferably, 1024x768 pixel resolution.
If you have more than 256 colors, images may not display correctly under Tk 4.2.
B-7: Problems with clock command on Windows
Beware of clock format commands across operating systems
Tcl's clock format command eventually passes it's format string to strftime(). strftime() may have different implementations depending on the underlying operating system.
For example, Windows NT 3.51 doesn't implement the %D, %e, and %h directives. This can some interesting side effects.
The bug report: If you do supply one of these unknown directives (and nothing else), Tcl can go into a loop. The FormatClock routine keeps calling strftime() because it mistakenly assumes that a 0 return must mean that the target buffer is too small. Indeed, if you just pass it "%e", the strftime() function gets annoyed at it as a directive and erroneously returns 0. Oddly enough adding a bit of whitespace to the format command gets rid of the loop.
This may be an NT oddity only, I don't think you can know for sure that it won't happen elsewhere.
-Dave Griffin
B-8: wm iconbitmap doesn't work on Windows
The wm iconbitmap command does not work on Windows.
if you execute the following command, you'll still see Tcl's icon for
your application:
wm iconbitmap . filename
To change this, you need to substitute your own .ico file and recompile the relevant parts of the Tk source code.
-Eric Foster-Johnson
B-9: If you use a pipe (|) in open, until the child process has terminated no events will be processed
If you start a process in a pipe, e.g., 'open "| ...."' until the child process has terminated no events will be processed.
-John Robert LoVerso
B-10: The rightmost mouse button is Button-3
Even with a two-button mouse, the rigthmost mouse button is identified in Tk as Button-3.
This really isn't bad, especially if you coded your pop-up menus to appear on Button-3 events, following the style of most Motif programs. Your scripts will continue to work on Windows.
-Eric Foster-Johnson
B-11: Tk on Windows supports cursors
The -cursor option should work on Windows now with all the built-in X Window cursors.
B-12: Sockets are not available on the system error
If you get an error like the above, chances are you have not installed the winsock.dll dynamic-link library that adds networking socket functionality to Windows.
B-13: toplevel -container does not work
The -container option is not fully implemented on Windows at present. The only functionally complete implementation is on X Windows.
You can use the '-use' option as long as the supplied window ID identifies a window that is not managed by Tk. This is known to work on both Unix and Windows. The Mac implementation is not, as far as I know, able to handle this in the general case; we did something special (a hack :) for the Tcl plugin on the Mac.
I cannot say when things will get better on this front. It's on our todo list and will percolate upwards according to demand etc etc..
-Jacob Levy
B-14: exec: couldn't create error file for command: Error 0
If exec returns an error message of "couldn't create error file for command: Error 0", the following may help:
This problem exists under Unix and Windows NT. I have conclusive proof that under Unix it was being caused by the temporary directory not being world writable, which explains why superusers were able to "exec" something but not a regular user. The "gotcha!" is that /tmp is not necessarily the temporary directory that is used, so people were not seeing an obvious problem. Tcl uses the tmpnam() system call, which on many systems actually uses /var/tmp, and on some systems that directory was not world writable. I would like to call this a problem with one's site administration.
Here's a simple program to determine your temporary directory:
main()
{
char name[100];
tmpnam(name);
puts(name);
}
which prints out the full pathname for a potential new temporary file. If the specified directory is not world writable, you can't create temp files.
Now, the question turns to Windows. This I have not yet resolved. Under NT, which has users and directory permissions, it may be the same problem as under Unix. However, since this problem is also occurring under Windows 3.1 it may be another problem or combination of the two. I will post results as soon as possible.
-Colin Stevens
Windows 3.1 Issues
W3-1: How to execute tclsh76.exe from Windows 3.1You can run tclsh76.exe under Windows 3.1, but not from a DOS shell. You can invoke tclsh76.exe by making a program manager icon for the command line that you want to execute. Since tclsh76.exe is not a DOS application, you can not invoke it from the shell.
-Scott Stanton
W3-2: Strange behaviour of exec under Win 3.1
Unfortunately the support for exec under Win32s is very limited. Most of this is because of Win32s. There are definitely some improvements that could be made (e.g. letting you start Windows apps), but it is never going to be as good as the Windows 95 or NT versions. Basically Windows 3.1 doesn't have a very complete process model, and most of what you see in the DOS window is done using non-Windows APIs. I could probably get Tcl to do the same things, but it's going to require a lot of very Windows 3.1 specific coding to get it to work. There are a number of other things that are higher priority, so it probably won't happen for a while. I would encourage anyone who really wants this feature to work on it and send me patches.
-Scott Stanton
W3-3: Windows 3 doesn't support help contents file
The problem is that Win3.1/3.11 don't support the contents file. I think what is needed is an additional help page that lists the contents. This is redundant under Windows 95 and NT, but necessary for 3.1/3.11.
For now, however, you should be able to use the keyword search facility to get to any of the man pages.
-Scott Stanton
Compiling
C-1: Getting the source codeThe Tcl7.6p2 and Tk4.2p2 releases officially support Unix, Windows and Macintosh platforms. The source code comes with a win/ directory with Windows code. You can get the source code release on the Internet via FTP from ftp.scriptics.com, in the directory /pub/tcl.
For Windows users, you'll likely want the source code compressed in ZIP format, rather than GNU gzip. Pick up the files tcl76p2.zip and tk42p2.zip.
-Eric Foster-Johnson
C-2: Tcl uses long file names
Both Tcl and Tk use long file names. You'll need Windows 95 or Windows NT (with an NTFS file system) for the sources.
You may also need a modern ZIP program to extract the archive and maintain its long file names. Older versions of pkzip, for example, only understand the old DOS eight character (with up to three characters for an extension) file names. I use WinZip, a shareware archiver program for Windows.
-Eric Foster-Johnson
C-3: Tcl was compiled with Borland C++
Although the Tcl and Tk DLL's were generated using the Borland C++ compiler, it is possible to write extensions and applications in Visual C++ (or other compilers). There are a couple of gotchas to be aware of, however.
First, you will need the VC++ .lib files, which are part of the Tcl release. Look for files named tcl80vc.lib or tk80vc.lib something like that. (The 80 changes depending on the version number. 80 corresponds to Tcl/Tk 8.0. 81 would correspond to Tcl/Tk 8.1, and so on.)
Second, because the malloc/free supplied by Borland is not compatible with that supplied by Microsoft, you must not free memory allocated by Tcl using the Microsoft free(). Instead, you should use the Tcl_Ckfree() call. The most common case is uses of Tcl_SplitList.
Additonally, you should not pass malloc'ed memory to Tcl, expecting Tcl to free it. If you want to allocate memory that Tcl will free, use Tcl_Ckalloc() instead. This will mostly affect uses of Tcl_SetResult (or interp->result) and the TCL_DYNAMIC flag.
In future releases, ckalloc and ckfree will use Tcl_Ckalloc() and Tcl_Ckfree() instead of malloc and free, but for now you should use these routines directly.
-Scott Stanton
Note that Borland C++ users must upgrade to version 4.52 to compile Tk 4.1 and higher. If you get an error like the following, you'll need to upgrade:
Error ..\win\tkWinWm.c 553: Undefined symbol 'WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW' in...
C-4: Where are the .lib files?
- For Borland:
-
You can generate the .lib files from the .dll files shipped with
the binary release by using the implib.exe utility that comes with
Borland C++. For example, to generate tcl76.lib, you would issue
the following command:
implib tcl76.lib tcl76.dll - For Visual C++:
- The .lib files for Visual C++ have an extra "vc" in the file name, e.g., tcl80vc.lib.
-Scott Stanton
C-5: Creating Dynamic Extensions on Windows
Version 7.6 of Tcl has the ability to dynamically load binary Tcl extensions at run time. We have written a sample dynamically loadable extension that should work on all of the platforms where dynamic loading is supported. This example can serve as a template for building your own extensions.
The example is available from ftp://ftp.scriptics.com/pub/tcl
- example.tar.Z
- This file contains a sample loadable Tcl extension
for Macintosh, Windows, and Unix platforms.
- example.tar.gz
- Same as example.tar.Z except compressed with gzip instead of compress.
- example.zip
- Same as example.tar.Z except archived with zip
instead of tar and compress.
-Scott Stanton
C-6: C++ and DLLs
If you write your Tcl extensions in C++, you'll likely need to use the extern "C" { }; statement in C++ to use your functions in Tcl. This is due to the user of "name mangling" in most C++ compilers.
Compiling with Microsoft Visual C++?
M-1: How to fix the makefile for Microsoft Visual C++
With MS VC++ 5.0, the default installation places the
compiler in \Program Files\DevStudio\VC. Because of the
space in the name Program Files the -I (include file)
option in the makefiles will likely fail. Spaces are used
to separate command-line parameters.
You can use the short (DOS) directory name in place of the
Program Files, e.g. -Ic:\progra~1\devstudio\vc\include
in place of c:\Program Files\DevStudio\VC\include.
You can also place the commands int he makefile.vc files in quotes, e.g.:
cc32 = "$(TOOLS32)\bin\cl.exe" link32 = "$(TOOLS32)\bin\link.exe" rc32 = "$(IDE32)\bin\rc.exe" include32 = -I"$(TOOLS32)\include"
With Microsoft Visual C++, you need to have both a 32-bit compiler (e.g., MSVC++ 2.2 or 4.0) and a 16-bit compiler (e.g., MSVC++ 1.5). You may then have to edit the makefiles to point to the proper directories.
The default uses something like the following:
- MSVC++ 4.0
- C:\MSDEV
- MSVC++ 1.52
- C:\MSVC
-Eric Foster-Johnson
If you're getting a problem with compiling the resources for Tcl, the following may help.
The problem is that we're letting nmake define
RC and CC rather than
explicitly define them yourself. CC runs as cl.exe without an explicit
path, so depending on your $PATH setup, it might run the wrong
compiler version. I changed my makefile to use TOOLS32, rc32 and
cc32, explicitly defined off of TOOLS32, and it worked fine.
The changes made are:
Added:
cc32 = $(TOOLS32)\bin\cl -I$(TOOLS32)\include rc32 = $(TOOLS32)\bin\rc
Changed:
TOOLS32 = c:\msdev
- changed all instances of RC to rc32, CC to cc32 and TOOLS to TOOLS32
- changed resource compiler to use -r flag.
-John Buckman
M-2: Can I use the Binary Release .DLL with my compiled applications?
The binary release is compiled with Borland C++. You can build the DLLs from source code, or use the libraries compiled with Microsoft Visual C++, which have "vc" in the file names.
-Scott Stanton and Cristian Mata
M-3: Allocate memory with Tcl_Alloc
If you allocate memory from within a Visual C++ program and pass that memory on the the Tcl DLLs, you must allocate that memory with Tcl_Alloc().
If you allocate memory via some other means, pass that memory to Tcl and later get a crash, you were warned.
M-4: How to compile with Microsoft Visual C++
To compile Tcl with Microsoft Visual C++, I followed these steps:
- You must have installed both MSVC++ 1.5 (16-bit compiler) and MSVC++ 2.2 or higher (32-bit compiler). I used 4.0 on Windows 95.
- Fix the makefiles as described above, if necessary.
-
Go to the Tcl and Tk source directories. Copy
makefile.vctomakefile. Do this in both directories. -
In the Developer Studio (I'm using version 4.0),
open the makefile in the Tcl source directory.
Choose the Open... choice from the File menu. In the List Files of Type entry near the bottom, select All Files (*.*). Then, in the Open As: entry (near the bottom right), select Makefile. You do this because you want to make a new project out of an existing makefile. This will create a new "project" with an executable name of "makefile1.exe". Since this is not a very good name for the Tcl interpreter, change makefile1.exe to tclsh.exe.
- Now, select Rebuild All in the Build menu to compile the library and tclsh.exe.
-
When completed, go to the Tk directory and open its
makefilethe same way you did the Tcl directorymakefile. This will create a new project for the Tk sources. - This time, rename the executable from "makefile1.exe" to wish.exe.
- Rebuild all again to compile Tk and wish.exe.
- When you're done, you'll need to copy tclsh.exe, wish.exe and all .DLL files from both the Tcl and Tk directories into your target directory. The .DLL files are the new dynamic link libraries you created with Microsoft's, instead of Borland's, C++ compiler.
-Eric Foster-Johnson
M-5: Problems with Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2 and Tcl
If you're using Visual C++ 4.2 and running under Windows 95, you may get an error that the msvcrt.dll cannot be found. You may also have problems with an invalid argument error.
You can solve your problem one of two ways:
- Back out of VC++ 4.2 to VC++ 4.1
- Install the msvcrt.dll that's missing (or on some Win95 systems, corrupted!) in your c:\windows\system directory.
-Jacob Levy
M-6: Tcl and Microsoft Foundation Classes
CTkView is a C++ class which can be used in MFC SDI or MDI applications. An instance of CTkView hosts an embedded Tk toplevel widget and performs some management chores for the widget so that it can size, update and react correctly to Windows events.
-David Shepherd
For more information, see http://home.t-online.de/home/dshepherd/tkview.htm.
Extensions
E-1: Expect
Expect works on Windows NT. You can get it from:
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/expectnt.html
E-2: Tix works on Windows
The Tix extension has been ported to windows.
E-3: ODBC
OdbcTcl 0.2 for Win32 provides a Tcl extension to call ODBC 2.0 functions from Tcl.
You can get it from ftp.neosoft.com in /pub/tcl/sorted/databases/odbctcl-0.2.
A common problem appears regarding the DSN value. A cample connect command is:
odbc_connect sql "DSN=mydb;UID=foo;PWD=bar"
-Jose L Porcayo
An ODBC extension to Tcl is available at http://www.megalos.fi/~rnurmi/tclodbc.html
E-4: Network, Registry and ODBC Extensions
NT, ODBC, network, and registry extensions available for the Windows version of TCL (7.6) are available at: ftp://ftp.maxwell.syr.edu/pub/tcl/tcl76/ntext-prelim.zip
-Christopher M Sedore (cmsedore@maxwell.syr.edu)
E-5: Itcl
Itcl 2.2 and higher works on Windows.
E-6: BLT Win32 Patches
Patches for the BLT 2.1 extension for Win32 are available from:
http://www.jessikat.demon.co.uk/bltpatches.html
Status: Tiled widgets problematic, bgexec/busy not working, drag&drop ok with dde.
In addition, you can get a Tcl Win32 Mem Debug patch, to allow for debugging output on memory allocations to get sent to the console. This is available from:
http://www.jessikat.demon.co.uk/tclWA.html
E-7: VerTcl/TkCon Provides a Useful Console On Windows
VerTcl (also called TkCon) provides an enhanced console window that proves very useful on systems that don't provide built-in consoles, such as Windows and MacOS.
You can get more information on VerTcl/TkCon, and the code, too, from http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~jhobbs/work/tkcon/.
E-8: OCX Extensions for Tcl
There are a number of OCX extensions for Tcl, including:
- http://home.earthlink.net/~affriedl/TclOCX/index.html
- TclOCX includes TclAxLib 1.0, which is an ActiveX DLL
extension. This DLL supports the "axload" command which enables
Tcl to dynamically load command extensions from ActiveX DLL's.
- http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Projects/zeno/tocx/index.html
- An ActiveX extension for Tcl. This extension allows you to use
existing OCX or ActiveX controls in a widget-like way.
tkTable 1.3, an editable 2D table/matrix widget. Supports Unix Tcl/Tk variants and Windows, requires Tcl7.5+/Tk4.1+, compiling is required. Precompiled Tk8.0a2 DLL is included.
http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/tcl/code/capp/ or
ftp://ftp.cs.uoregon.edu/pub/tcl/tkTable/
E-10: MDI (Muliple Document Interface)
There is a very nice Tcl-only package called mdw-lib (Multi Document Windows) written by Thomas Schwarze (mailto:swz@rtws18.ee.tu-berlin.de) that does that kinda stuff. You can find it at:
ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/languages/tcl/alcatel/potpourri/mdw_lib-1.0.tgz
ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/languages/tcl/alcatel/potpourri/mdw_lib.lsm.Z
-Frederic Bonnet
E-11: Windows shortcuts extension
This is an early release of a shortcut manipulation extension for tcl 7.6/tk 4.2. It allows you to create, modify, and get information from a NT 4.0 or Windows 95 shortcut.Docs are available at http://zazu.maxwell.syr.edu/nt-tcl/shortcut.htm
Download from: ftp://ftp.maxwell.syr.edu/tcl/tcl76/shortcut.dll.
-Chris Sedore
E-12: TclX
Extended Tcl is a set of Tcl extensions and a shell that are oriented towards Unix system programming tasks and large application development. TclX 7.6.0 is compatible with Tcl7.6 and Tk 4.2 releases.
This release includes incomplete support for Windows 95/NT as well as a binary release for Windows 95/NT.
Full source for Unix and Windows:
ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/tcl/tclx-distrib/tclX7.6.0.tar.gz
Windows 95/NT binary release, tar and gzip format:
ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/tcl/incoming/tclXwin7.6.0.tar.gz
Windows 95/NT binary release, zip format:
ftp://ftp.neosoft.com/pub/tcl/incoming/tclXwin7.6.0.zip
If you have any questions or problem, please remember to contact tcl-project@NeoSoft.com directly.
E-13: Togl (Tk OpenGL)
See http://www.informatik.uni-rostock.de/~rschultz/togl.html for information on Togl for NT, http://www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson/Togl.html for more on Togl.
E-14: cc:Mail
Electric Memo Ltd. has a shareware Tcl add-on called Xccm that allows access to cc:Mail via the VIM32 dlls. This link usually fails when I test it. I've only kept the link here because the company asked me to include a link.
E-15: Tabbed dialogs, Combobox, etc.
While this isn't an extension, Jeff Hobbs provides a number of widgets written in Tcl, including a tabbed dialog and combobox.
E-16: DLL-Caller Extension
Robin Becker's dll package allows your Tcl scripts to call functions in Win32 DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries).
E-17: WinExec, Print, and Other Extensions
Michael Schwartz offers a number of Windows extensions that include winexec to launch 16-bit Windows applications and print, which, as you'd expect, allows you to print from Tcl scripts.
Thanks To:
Frederic Bonnet
John Buckman
Gordon Chaffee
Joe English
Dave Griffin
Jon Herlocker
Alex Hubbard
Dennis R. LaBelle
Gordon Lack
Ioi Lam
Jacob Levy
Don Libes
John Robert LoVerso
Cristian Mata
Robert Philpott
Jose L Porcayo
Josh Putnam
Brian L. Rubow
Michael Schwartz
Christopher M Sedore
Charles A. Shartsis
David Shepherd
Hume Smith
Scott Stanton
Colin Stevens
Larry Virden
John Waterson
Compiled by Eric Foster-Johnson, author of Graphical Applications with Tcl and Tk. Please send updates to erc@pconline.com.
DISCLAIMER. This article is provided as is without any express or implied warranties. While every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this article, the maintainer assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
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