Tcl/Tk 8.5 Programming Cookbook

  • Author: Bert Wheeler
  • Publisher: Packt publishing
  • ISBN: 978-1-849512-98-5

First things first: Despite its title, this is not a cookbook, but a reference guide. For a large selection of common Tcl commands, the book gives an overview of the syntax, arguments, subcommands and behavior. This is followed by a simple example that shows the command in use, but the examples are too basic to count as "cookbook recipes".

The book may appeal to programmers who are new to Tcl. Even though the reference material can all be found on the web, it is nice to have it all available in one bundle. I'm not new to Tcl (at all), but I learned a thing or two about new features in Tcl8.5 that I had not used before. For expert Tcl'ers, the book promises to "sharpen their skills", but it does not manage to live up to this promise. Not even close. The examples are simply too straightforward (bordering on banality most of the time), and the reference material is too familiar. For advanced tips and tricks, the Tcl'ers wiki is still the place to be.

The book is organized in a logical way, following the expected line of topics from how to use the Tcl shell, via strings, lists, dictionaries and files, to the Tk toolkit. Titles are rendered inside black boxes with plenty of space around them, to make them easier to spot when you're looking for a specific item.

At barely 200 pages, with a lot of repeated content and with titles and subtitles taking up a lot of space, this book is not exactly a bargain but not unreasonably expensive either (28 euros, 40 US dollars, 25 pounds).

The review copy I received, contained a large number of annoying errors, both in the code examples and in the English. It will require a lot of polishing and cleanup to turn this into a final print version, but the potential is definitely there. And Packt publishing has a very open policy, so it was easy to send feedback and errata through the website.

In short: I do not recommend this book for Tcl experts; it might be good for beginners if the publisher manages to clean up the content first.