According to Paul Prescod <papresco@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>:
:In article <s6ypvvukubq.fsf@aalh02.alcatel.com.au>,
:Chris Bitmead uid(x22068) <Chris.Bitmead@alcatel.com.au> wrote:
:>none the wiser (apart from awful performance of course). Why do you
:>want to fit everything in a string?? It buys you NOTHING.
Note that Tcl does _not_ store _everything_ in a string. It uses strings
as the data type to pass between it's commands.
For instance, when one opens a file, one gets back a string whose value
is a handle pointing to an open file descriptor. The file descriptor remains
the binary structure the OS expects. The Tk extension's creation of
widgets is another fine example. I hope that folk don't think that Tcl
somehow converts all the various X window system structures to string to
pass around. Instead, handles (of type string) for these structures are
created. When one needs to manipulate the binary entity under one of these
handles, one uses a structure which knows how to move from the string to the
structure and back.
Various other extensions have had great success adding other handles to other
data types. So in the strictest sense, one is not just limited to strings
in Tcl. One is, at least pre-Tcl 8.0, limited in treating the _names_
of these entities as strings.
--
Larry W. Virden INET: lvirden@cas.org
<URL:http://www.teraform.com/%7Elvirden/> <*> O- "We are all Kosh."
Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should
be construed as representing my employer's opinions.
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