Author: Kevin B. Kenny <[email protected]>
State: Final
Type: Project
Vote: Done
Created: 22-Sep-2008
Post-History:
Tcl-Version: 8.6
Abstract
This TIP proposes to modify the lset command to allow it to extend lists.
Proposal
The lset command shall be modified to allow the index end+1 (or any equivalent index designating the element one beyond the last element of the list). For the simple usage:
lset list end+1 foo
the effect is the same as if the script had evaluated the command:
lappend list foo
For the usage:
lset list $n end+1 foo
the effect is much the same as if the script had evaluated:
set temp [lindex $list $n]
lappend temp foo
lset list $n $temp
(except, of course that no temp variable is created)
The usage:
lset list end+1 0 foo
or, equivalently,
lset list end+1 end+1 foo
is equivalent to
lappend list [list foo]
Rationale
Clearly, there are equivalent constructs to all of these usages. Nevertheless, it is convenient not to have to worry about whether a given index is in bounds, particularly when iterating through a vector or matrix. With the proposed change, many of the standard algorithms in linear algebra will just work, without either having to preinitialize a list to a given size or to have a test to determine whether to use lappend or lset to store a given element.
Alternatives
Explicitly out of scope is the treatment of indices greater than or equal to end+2. Setting non-contiguous elements would raise false expectations of sparse lists, NULL elements, and so on.
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by Kevin B. Kenny.
This document may be distributed subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, version 1.0 http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/ .