Tcl_Concat(3)

📦
version 9.0.3 · 4 versions
, in alpine 3.23, alpine 3.24, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixos 26.05

✨ Tcl_Concat — the concatenate-a-whole-bunch-of-strings bestie ✨

okay so this one lives in the Tcl Library Procedures manual, it's called Tcl_Concat, and bestie… it's giving glue but make it C. let's get into it 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

Tcl_Concat — literally just concatenate a collection of strings. that's it. that's the whole girl. 💖

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

#include <tcl.h>

const char *
Tcl_Concat(argc, argv)

🦋 ARGUMENTS 🦋

  • Tcl_Size argc (in) — the number of strings, like how many besties are showing up to the function 💫
  • const char *const argv[] (in) — the array of strings you wanna concatenate. it must have argc entries, no cap. don't be out here passing a short array, that's not the vibe 🙈

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

so Tcl_Concat is a little utility procedure that several of the Tcl commands use under the hood. give it a collection of strings and it smooshes them all together into one single string, with the original strings separated by spaces. simple. elegant. iconic. ✨

but here's the thing, and it's highkey important: this procedure behaves differently from Tcl_Merge. the difference? Tcl_Concat just straight-up concatenates — it makes no effort to make sure you get proper list structure out of it. none. zero. it's not checking, it's not formatting, it's just vibing and pasting. 🫶

however — and this is the slay part — in most common usage the arguments you pass in will all be proper lists themselves anyway. and if that's the case, then the result will also have proper list structure. so like, usually it works out. it's giving "trust the process" 💀

Tcl_Concat also eliminates leading and trailing white space as it copies strings from argv to the result. and if an element of argv is literally nothing but white space? that string gets ignored entirely. not trimmed, not kept, just gone. poof. this white-space removal was added to make the output of the concat command cleaner-looking, and honestly? we love a tidy queen 🎀

⚠️ bestie, listen: the result string is dynamically allocated using Tcl_Alloc. so the caller must eventually release that space by calling Tcl_Free. do not forget. do not ghost your malloc'd memory. that's how you get leaks and leaks are not cute. 😭

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

  • Tcl_ConcatObj

🌈 KEYWORDS 🌈

concatenate, strings

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this little icon dropped in the Tcl manual, version 7.5, filed under Tcl_Concat(3) — go forth, concat responsibly, and remember: free your strings. mwah 💋💅✨

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