Tcl Library Procedures Tcl_SplitList(3TCL)
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NAME
Tcl_SplitList, Tcl_Merge, Tcl_ScanElement,
Tcl_ConvertElement, Tcl_ScanCountedElement,
Tcl_ConvertCountedElement - manipulate Tcl lists
SYNOPSIS
#include
intTcl_SplitList(interp, list, argcPtr, argvPtr)
char *Tcl_Merge(argc, argv)
intTcl_ScanElement(src, flagsPtr)
intTcl_ScanCountedElement(src, length, flagsPtr)
intTcl_ConvertElement(src, dst, flags)
intTcl_ConvertCountedElement(src, length, dst, flags)
ARGUMENTSTcl_Interp *interp (out) Interpreter to
use for error reporting. If NULL, then no error message is left. char *list (in) Pointer to a string with proper list structure. int *argcPtr (out) Filled in withnumber of ele-
ments in list. CONST char ***argvPtr (out) *argvPtr will be filled in with the address of an array of pointers to the strings that are the extracted Tcl Last change: 8.0 1Tcl Library Procedures Tcl_SplitList(3TCL)
elements of list. There will be *argcPtr valid entries inthe array, fol-
lowed by a NULL entry.int argc (in) Number of ele-
ments in argv. CONST char * CONST *argv (in) Array of strings to merge together into a single list. Each string will become a separate element of the list. CONST char *src (in) String that is to become an element of a list. int *flagsPtr (in) Pointer to word to fill in with information about src. The value of *flagsPtr must be passed toTcl_ConvertElement.
int length (in) Number of bytes in string src. char *dst (in) Place to copy converted list element. Must contain enough characters to hold converted string. int flags (in) Information about src. Must be valuereturned by pre-
vious call toTcl_ScanElement,
possibly OR-ed
Tcl Last change: 8.0 2Tcl Library Procedures Tcl_SplitList(3TCL)
withTCL_DONT_USE_BRACES.
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DESCRIPTION
These procedures may be used to disassemble and reassembleTcl lists. Tcl_SplitList breaks a list up into its consti-
tuent elements, returning an array of pointers to the ele-
ments using argcPtr and argvPtr. While extracting the argu-
ments, Tcl_SplitList obeys the usual rules for backslash
substitutions and braces. The area of memory pointed to by *argvPtr is dynamically allocated; in addition to the array of pointers, it also holds copies of all the list elements. It is the caller's responsibility to free up all of this storage. For example, suppose that you have calledTcl_SplitList with the following code:
int argc, code; char *string; char **argv; ...code = Tcl_SplitList(interp, string, &argc, &argv);
Then you should eventually free the storage with a call like the following:Tcl_Free((char *) argv);
Tcl_SplitList normally returns TCL_OK, which means the list
was successfully parsed. If there was a syntax error inlist, then TCL_ERROR is returned and the interpreter's
result will point to an error message describing the problem(if interp was not NULL). If TCL_ERROR is returned then no
memory is allocated and *argvPtr is not modified.Tcl_Merge is the inverse of Tcl_SplitList: it takes a col-
lection of strings given by argc and argv and generates a result string that has proper list structure. This means that commands like index may be used to extract the originalelements again. In addition, if the result of Tcl_Merge is
passed to Tcl_Eval, it will be parsed into argc words whose
values will be the same as the argv strings passed toTcl_Merge. Tcl_Merge will modify the list elements with
braces and/or backslashes in order to produce proper Tcl list structure. The result string is dynamically allocatedusing Tcl_Alloc; the caller must eventually release the
space using Tcl_Free.
If the result of Tcl_Merge is passed to Tcl_SplitList, the
elements returned by Tcl_SplitList will be identical to
those passed into Tcl_Merge. However, the converse is not
true: if Tcl_SplitList is passed a given string, and the
resulting argc and argv are passed to Tcl_Merge, the result-
ing string may not be the same as the original string passed Tcl Last change: 8.0 3Tcl Library Procedures Tcl_SplitList(3TCL)
to Tcl_SplitList. This is because Tcl_Merge may use
backslashes and braces differently than the original string.Tcl_ScanElement and Tcl_ConvertElement are the procedures
that do all of the real work of Tcl_Merge. Tcl_ScanElement
scans its src argument and determines how to use backslashes and braces when converting it to a list element. It returns an overestimate of the number of characters required to represent src as a list element, and it stores informationin *flagsPtr that is needed by Tcl_ConvertElement.
Tcl_ConvertElement is a companion procedure to
Tcl_ScanElement. It does the actual work of converting a
string to a list element. Its flags argument must be thesame as the value returned by Tcl_ScanElement.
Tcl_ConvertElement writes a proper list element to memory
starting at *dst and returns a count of the total number of characters written, which will be no more than the resultreturned by Tcl_ScanElement. Tcl_ConvertElement writes out
only the actual list element without any leading or trailing spaces: it is up to the caller to include spaces between adjacent list elements.Tcl_ConvertElement uses one of two different approaches to
handle the special characters in src. Wherever possible, it handles special characters by surrounding the string withbraces. This produces clean-looking output, but can't be
used in some situations, such as when src contains unmatchedbraces. In these situations, Tcl_ConvertElement handles
special characters by generating backslash sequences forthem. The caller may insist on the second approach by OR-
ing the flag value returned by Tcl_ScanElement with
TCL_DONT_USE_BRACES. Although this will produce an uglier
result, it is useful in some special situations, such aswhen Tcl_ConvertElement is being used to generate a portion
of an argument for a Tcl command. In this case, surrounding src with curly braces would cause the command not to be parsed correctly.Tcl_ScanCountedElement and Tcl_ConvertCountedElement are the
same as Tcl_ScanElement and Tcl_ConvertElement, except the
length of string src is specified by the length argument, and the string may contain embedded nulls. KEYWORDS backslash, convert, element, list, merge, split, stringsATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes: Tcl Last change: 8.0 4Tcl Library Procedures Tcl_SplitList(3TCL)
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| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE|
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| Availability | runtime/tcl-8 |
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| Interface Stability| Uncommitted ||____________________|_________________|
NOTES Source for Tcl is available on http://opensolaris.org. Tcl Last change: 8.0 5