Fourth Annual USENIX Tcl/Tk Workshop, 1996
Tksh: A Tcl Library for KornShell
Jeffrey Korn
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
Abstract
This paper describes Tksh, an implementation of the Tcl C library
written on top of the library for the new KornShell (ksh93). Tksh
emulates the behavior of Tcl by using the API that is provided for
extending ksh93, which is similar to the Tcl library in that it allows
access to variables, functions and other state of the interpreter.
This implementation requires no modification to ksh93, and allows Tcl
libraries such as Tk to run on top of ksh93 unchanged, making it
possible to use shell scripts in place of Tcl scripts. ksh93 is well
suited for use with Tk because it is backward compatible with sh,
making it both easy to learn and easy to extend existing scripts to
provide a graphical user interface. Tksh is not yet another port of Tk
to another language - it allows Tcl scripts to run without modification
using the ksh93 internals. This makes it possible to combine Tcl and
ksh93, which is useful for writing ksh93 scripts that use components
that have been implemented in Tcl (such as Tk widgets).
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