TIP: 214 Title: Add New Object Introspection Command Version: $Revision: 1.7 $ Author: Ulrich Schöbel Author: Larry W. Virden State: Withdrawn Type: Project Vote: Pending Created: 24-Aug-2004 Post-History: Keywords: Tcl,info,representation Tcl-Version: 8.7 Obsoletes: 117 ~ Abstract This TIP proposes the new '''representation''' subcommand to '''info''' which returns the internal representation of a variable's contents. ~Rationale Inspired by a posting on news:comp.lang.tcl by Victor Wagner, I considered a facility to obtain the internal representation of the value of a variable to be useful. * It further extends the Tcl introspection commands. * It offers a method to check the type of a variable without conversion. * During the development process it is useful to detect/avoid shimmering and its negative performance effects. ~Proposed Change Add the new subcommand '''info representation''' with the following syntax: > '''info representation''' ''varName'' It returns the type of the variable ''varName'' or an error, if * ''varName'' doesn't exist, * ''varName'' is an array and no index is provided, * ''varName'' is a scalar variable but an index is provided. ~Implementation A patch against Tcl8.4.6 is available [http://sf.net/support/tracker.php?aid=1015338]. ~Copyright This document has been placed in the public domain.