A brief description of each implementation of Tcl listed in Category Tcl Implementations, preceded by the language of its source code.
- C, Tcl is 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 is a slimmed-down fork of Tcl 6.7
- C, ettcl is a slimmed-down fork of Tcl 7.x
- C, PalmTcl is a fork of Tcl 7.6 for PalmOS v3.x. See also Small Tcl.
- C, MicroTcl is 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
- Parrot, ParTcl is the Tcl implementation for parrot, the Perl 6 virtual machine
- Java, Jacl, intended as a full implementation of Tcl in Java
- Java, Hecl, designed to be small, intended for J2ME cellphones
- JavaScript, Tcl in JavaScript, converted from Picol
- FORTRAN, FEMTOL
- concept, HereTcl, MicroTcl for Tcl9, The Very Minimal Tcl Core Command Set, Titoo: a thought experiment or T2, Implement tcl in tcl
- Haskell, Hiccup [L1 ], 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 [L2 ] is really an implementation of Forth
- Cricket - see Small Tcl
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.