Tcl is a highly dynamic language that is especially challenging to execute efficiently. In this paper, I discuss many issues involved in implementing Tcl, and describe a design for a faster system that maintains Tcl semantics, including its C callout mechanism. This design focuses on a method for caching the parsed representation for data values, and lazily converting to strings on demand. This allows most computations to be performed using native types (e.g. integers) rather than strings. The current implementation is presented along with results showing a speedup of about 5-10 times over the existing Tcl interpreter.
Title
TC: An Efficient Implementation of the Tcl Language
Published
1994-04-01
Full Collection Name
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Technical Reports
Other Identifiers
CSD-94-812
Type
Text
Extent
35 p
Archive
The Engineering Library
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