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2. Introduction to Tcl and Tk

The tool command language Tcl (pronounced tickle) is an interpreted, action-oriented, string-based, command language. It was created by John Ousterhaut in the late 1980's along with the Tk graphical toolkit. Tcl and the Tk toolkit comprise one of the earliest scripted programming environments for the X Window System. Though it is venerable by today's standards, Tcl/Tk remains a handy tool for developers and administrators who want to rapidly build graphical frontends for command line utilities.

Tcl and Tk come bundled with most major Linux distributions and source-based releases are available from tcl.sourceforge.net. If Tcl and Tk are not installed on your system, the source releases are available from the SourceForge Tcl project: http://tcl.sourceforge.net/. Binary builds for most Linux distributions are available from rpmfind.net. A binary release is also available for Linux and other platforms from Active State at http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Tcl.