A brief description of each implementation of Tcl listed in
Category Tcl Implementations, preceded by the language of its source code.
| Impl. Lang. | Implementation | Description |
|---|
| C | Tcl | the definitive implementation and is written in C. The same code base can be used with different build options or targets, different sets of add-on packages, or different packaging (e.g. as a single binary file). These variations are distributions of Tcl and are covered in Category Distribution. |
| C | TinyTcl | a slimmed-down fork of Tcl 6.7 |
| C | ettcl | a slimmed-down fork of Tcl 7.x |
| C | PalmTcl | a fork of Tcl 7.6 for PalmOS v3.x. See also Small Tcl. |
| C | MicroTcl | a small subset of Tcl 8.4 for the Nebula 2 game/visualisation engine. See Small Tcl. |
| C | Jim | intended as a small-footprint implementation of Tcl 8.x (not a fork of 7.x or earlier) |
| C | Picol | a small interpreter in 500 lines of code - described as "an educational toy model only, it is weaker and slower that real Tcl" |
| C | Capicol | [please add description] |
| C++ | TinyTcl | (same name, different project) is a small interpreter written from scratch |
| C# | tclcsharp | a port of Jacl to .NET |
| C# | Jacl.NET | another port of Jacl to .NET |
| C# | Eagle | an implementation of Tcl for CLR. |
| Parrot | ParTcl | the Tcl implementation for parrot, the Perl 6 virtual machine |
| Java | Jacl | intended as a full implementation of Tcl in Java |
| Java | JTcl | implementation of Tcl 8.4 in Java |
| Java | Hecl | designed to be small, intended for J2ME cellphones |
| JavaScript | Tcl in JavaScript | converted from Picol |
| FORTRAN | FEMTOL | |
| Tcl | concept, HereTcl, MicroTcl for Tcl9, The Very Minimal Tcl Core Command Set, Titoo: a thought experiment or T2 | Implement tcl in tcl |
| Haskell | Hiccup | [1], a proof of concept inspired by Picol, aims to mostly match Tcl 8.5 features |
Several of these implementations are intended to reduce the footprint of Tcl. For a discussion of these small implementations, see
Small Tcl. Many take advantage of the smaller size of earlier versions of (definitive) Tcl: see
Advantages and disadvantages of different Tcl versions for a comparison.
Implementations of other languages that have recognisable similarities to Tcl:
- tinker - see TinyTcl
- Ficl [2] is really an implementation of Forth
- Cricket - see Small Tcl
- lil - see lil
Other systems listed on
Category Tcl Implementations are not distinct implementations:
- Parenthetcl is a Tcl/C hybrid for writing compiled Tcl extensions
- Tclkit is really a Tcl distribution. It is a single binary file that provides Tcl/Tk and a number of popular extensions.
