Tcl Books

Tcl/Tk Introductions

The following books are good introductions to Tcl/Tk:

Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk, 4th ed. by Brent Welch and Ken Jones. (Prentice Hall, 2003. ISBN: 0-13-038560-3.): The “bible” for Tcl information. It is by far the most comprehensive reference to the Tcl language available, and packed with great examples. Highly recommended.
Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, 2nd ed., by John Ousterhout and Ken Jones. (Addison-Wesley, 2009. ISBN: 0-321-33633-X.): From the creator of Tcl/Tk himself, completely updated for Tcl/Tk 8.5. It provides a clear and simple explanation of Tcl/Tk fundamentals, as well as the most comprehensive explanation of Tcl’s C API.
Tcl/Tk: A Developer’s Guide, 3rd ed., by Clif Flynt. (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003. ISBN: 978-0-12-384717-1.): Flynt’s book assumes that you’re an experienced programmer who wants to add Tcl/Tk to your toolkit of languages. Flynt demonstrates Tcl/Tk features in extended examples such as creating tree data structures and HTML display widgets.
Teach Yourself Tcl/Tk in 24 Hours, by Venkat VSS Sastry and Lakshmi Sastry. (Sams Publishing, 2000. ISBN: 0-672-31749-4.): A step-by-step introduction to Tcl/Tk, including quizes and exercises. Unfortunately, it appears as though the publisher has allowed this title to go out of print.

The following titles cover more specific applications of Tcl/Tk technologies and extensions (all assume a working knowledge of Tcl/Tk):

Exploring Expect, by Don Libes. (O’Reilly & Associates, 1995. ISBN: 1-56592-090-2.): By the author of the Expect extension himself, this book provides a comprehensive guide for using this invaluable tool for automated test and systems administration applications. Despite its age, the book still accurately describes virtually all of Expect’s features — a tribute to the completeness and stability of the extension.
[incr Tcl/Tk] from the Ground Up, by Chad Smith. (Osborrne/McGraw-Hill, 2000. ISBN: 0-07-212106-8.): Packed with examples and clear explanations, Smith introduces you to [incr Tcl], a widely-used extension that adds object-oriented programming features to Tcl. Smith also covers [incr Tk], an object-oriented framework for constructing megawidgets, and [incr Widgets], a collection of pre-built megawidgets. Unfortunately, it appears as though the publisher has allowed this title to go out of print.