OPERANDS

Operands may be specified in any of the following ways:

[1]

As a numeric value, either integer or floating-point.

[2]

As a boolean value, using any form understood by string is boolean.

[3]

As a Tcl variable, using standard $ notation. The variable's value will be used as the operand.

[4]

As a string enclosed in double-quotes. The expression parser will perform backslash, variable, and command substitutions on the information between the quotes, and use the resulting value as the operand

[5]

As a string enclosed in braces. The characters between the open brace and matching close brace will be used as the operand without any substitutions.

[6]

As a Tcl command enclosed in brackets. The command will be executed and its result will be used as the operand.

[7]

As a mathematical function whose arguments have any of the above forms for operands, such as sin($x). See MATH FUNCTIONS below for a discussion of how mathematical functions are handled.

Where the above substitutions occur (e.g. inside quoted strings), they are performed by the expression's instructions. However, the command parser may already have performed one round of substitution before the expression processor was called. As discussed below, it is usually best to enclose expressions in braces to prevent the command parser from performing substitutions on the contents.

For some examples of simple expressions, suppose the variable a has the value 3 and the variable b has the value 6. Then the command on the left side of each of the lines below will produce the value on the right side of the line:

expr 3.1 + $a	6.1
expr 2 + "$a.$b"	5.6
expr 4*[llength "6 2"]	8
expr {{word one} < "word $a"}	0

OPERATORS

-  +  ~  !

Unary minus, unary plus, bit-wise NOT, logical NOT. None of these operators may be applied to string operands, and bit-wise NOT may be applied only to integers.

**

Exponentiation. Valid for any numeric operands.

*  /  %

Multiply, divide, remainder. None of these operators may be applied to string operands, and remainder may be applied only to integers. The remainder will always have the same sign as the divisor and an absolute value smaller than the absolute value of the divisor.

+  -

Add and subtract. Valid for any numeric operands.

<<  >>

Left and right shift. Valid for integer operands only. A right shift always propagates the sign bit.

<  >  <=  >=

Boolean less, greater, less than or equal, and greater than or equal. Each operator produces 1 if the condition is true, 0 otherwise. These operators may be applied to strings as well as numeric operands, in which case string comparison is used.

==  !=

Boolean equal and not equal. Each operator produces a zero/one result. Valid for all operand types.

eq  ne

Boolean string equal and string not equal. Each operator produces a zero/one result. The operand types are interpreted only as strings.

in  ni

List containment and negated list containment. Each operator produces a zero/one result and treats its first argument as a string and its second argument as a Tcl list. The in operator indicates whether the first argument is a member of the second argument list; the ni operator inverts the sense of the result.

&

Bit-wise AND. Valid for integer operands only.

^

Bit-wise exclusive OR. Valid for integer operands only.

|

Bit-wise OR. Valid for integer operands only.

&&

Logical AND. Produces a 1 result if both operands are non-zero, 0 otherwise. Valid for boolean and numeric (integers or floating-point) operands only.

||

Logical OR. Produces a 0 result if both operands are zero, 1 otherwise. Valid for boolean and numeric (integers or floating-point) operands only.

x?y:z

If-then-else, as in C. If x evaluates to non-zero, then the result is the value of y. Otherwise the result is the value of z. The x operand must have a boolean or numeric value.

See the C manual for more details on the results produced by each operator. The exponentiation operator promotes types like the multiply and divide operators, and produces a result that is the same as the output of the pow function (after any type conversions.) All of the binary operators group left-to-right within the same precedence level. For example, the command

expr {4*2 < 7}

The &&, ||, and ?: operators have “lazy evaluation”, just as in C, which means that operands are not evaluated if they are not needed to determine the outcome. For example, in the command

expr {$v ? [a] : [b]}

MATH FUNCTIONS

expr {sin($x+$y)}

expr {[tcl::mathfunc::sin [expr {$x+$y}]]}

tcl::mathfunc::sin [expr {$x+$y}]

The executor will search for tcl::mathfunc::sin using the usual rules for resolving functions in namespaces. Either ::tcl::mathfunc::sin or [namespace current]::tcl::mathfunc::sin will satisfy the request, and others may as well (depending on the current namespace path setting).

See the mathfunc(n) manual page for the math functions that are available by default.

TYPES, OVERFLOW, AND PRECISION

All internal computations involving floating-point are done with the C type double. When converting a string to floating-point, exponent overflow is detected and results in the double value of Inf or -Inf as appropriate. Floating-point overflow and underflow are detected to the degree supported by the hardware, which is generally pretty reliable.

Conversion among internal representations for integer, floating-point, and string operands is done automatically as needed. For arithmetic computations, integers are used until some floating-point number is introduced, after which floating-point is used. For example,

expr {5 / 4}

expr {5 / 4.0}
expr {5 / ( [string length "abcd"] + 0.0 )}

expr {20.0/5.0}

STRING OPERATIONS

expr {"0x03" > "2"}
expr {"0y" > "0x12"}