loon

A short comparison of the R and Tcl language is shown in the following two sessions that do exactly the same.

# Session in R
a <- 3
x <- c(1,2,3)
b <- 4 + a + x[1]
factorial <- function(n) {
  if(n == 0) {
    return(1)
  } else {
    return(factorial(n-1)*n)
  }
}

print(factorial(7))

# Same Session in Tcl
set a 3
set x [list 1 2 3]
set b [expr {4 + $a + [lindex $x 0]}]
proc factorial {n} {
  if {$n eq 0} {
    return 1
  } else {
    return [expr {[factorial\
             [expr {$n-1}]]*$n}]
  }
}
puts [factorial 7]

The backslash \ in Tcl can be used to write an expression on multiple lines. A general introduction to Tcl written by Adrian Waddell can be found here. An introduction to the tcltk R package by the package author Peter Dalgaard's can be found found on page 27 in R News volume 1/3 and on page 25 in R News volume 2/3.

In R, Tcl code can be sent to the Tcl interpreter with the tcl() and .Tcl() functions.

Both functions return an R object (S3) with class tclObj which displays itself with <Tcl> 1 in the R console. In Tcl, everything is a string, which makes it easy for R to display a tcl object by just adding a <Tcl> in front of the string that represents the Tcl data structure.

Note that an object of class tclObj in R is just the return string of a Tcl expression. So

will end with the R variable x to hold the string <Tcl> 1 and the Tcl variable a to hold the value 2.

To create a Tcl variable that is accessible from R one can use the tclVar() function as follows

The tclVar() is the creator function whereas the tclvalue() is the accessor function. The tclVar() function will create a RTcl1, RTcl2, etc., global Tcl variable. info globals is a Tcl command to display all global variables.

Since every Tcl object has a string representation the tclvalue() accessor might not be as expected, as for example in

the latter function will return "1 2 3", the string representation in Tcl for the list [list 1 2 3]. A workaround to this "quoting problem" is to use tclObj() as an alternate accessor function in combination with as.character(), as.double(), or as.integer() function. For example, the following R command

Data structures passed to the tcl() function will be converted with as.tclObj() to a Tcl object. Valid R data structures that can be converted to Tcl objects need a storage.mode() of one of character, integer, logical, and raw. Other objects will throw an error. This means vectors (also of length one) can be converted to Tcl lists but other R data structures such as lists or data.frames can not be converted to Tcl objects. Note that matrices and arrays of numbers have a storage mode double and can hence be converted to Tcl lists of dimension 1xn. Here two valid examples

R functions can be called from the Tcl interpreter via callback functions. For example

will return the string "R_call 0x16dca38 %x %y". Hence, to call foo() from the Tcl interpreter one can run

Note that the as.numeric() conversation in foo() is necessary since the function call from the Tcl interpreter passes strings as arguments to foo(). Also, if foo() were to return an R object it would be lost as the R_call will not convert R objects to Tcl objects.

A short overview of Tk and R

Tk is a graphical user interface toolkit. GUI elements are called widgets. Widgets are arranged in a window with geometry managers (such as pack and grid). Hence, the general workflow of creating a GUI with Tk is to create widgets, bind them to events such as mouse- or key- press and place them into a window.

The following R and Tcl code create the same GUI with a button that says "Click Me" and when clicked will output "Hello World" to the prompt.

# Session in R
tt <- tktoplevel()
b <- tkbutton(tt, text="Click Me")
tkpack(b, side = "top", anchor="w")
foo <- function() {
    print("Hello World")
}
tkconfigure(b, command=foo)

# Same Session in Tcl
set tt [toplevel .1]
set b [button .1.b -text "Click Me"]
pack $b -side top -anchor w
proc foo {} {
    puts "Hello World"
}
$b configure -command foo

Whereas the Tcl code comparison above did not show any conceptual differences, the Tk part in R has some shortcuts that can be taken via some wrapper functions (such as tktoplevel()) that are available in the tcltk R package. These wrapper functions are supposed to make the creation of Tk GUIs more natural for R users.

Every widget has one parent widget and possibly many children. Widgets that can have children are usually used for layout, such as the frame widget.

The child parent relationship is enforced in Tk by syntax. Every widget is part of a window path name where parent and child are separated by . (dot). The toplevel window itself is called . (dot). So a widget path name might be .a.b.c where c is a child of b is a child of a is a child of . (dot), the toplevel window.

The window path name is used to access and modify the state of a widget. For example in the above Tcl session the $b gets substituted with .1.b the window path name of the button widget.

In R, the explicit declaration of the window path name is omitted by having tktoplevel(), tkbutton(), tkframe(), etc. creating its own unique and valid path name. This results with having to pass the parent widget or window to the widget creator functions (tktoplevel() creates a window not a widget). Window path names, however, still exist in R and can be seen when looking at b$ID in R.

The pack geometry manager is explained in detail in this document written by Adrian Waddell.

A description of all Tk widgets and their use can be found in the Tk 8.6 manual page. The core widgets in the Tk packages are listed and displayed in this overview.

The tcltk R package provides many wrapper functions for widget commands such as the configure and cget which are valid sub commands for every Tk widget. A list all functions provided by the tcltk library including the wrapper functions can be obtained with

If, for example, one wants to see the Tcl equivalent of an R wrapper function, say the tkwm.geometry() function, one can often see the tcl() call with

which is in this case tcl("wm", "geometry", ...), hence the geometry sub-command of wm.

A short overview of Tcl and R

A short overview of Tk and R