[ Thanks to Mo
DeJong for this announcement: ]
I thought Linux today readers might like to know about the new
1.2.6 release of the Tcl/Java integration tools. The Tcl/Java
project combines powerful Tcl scripting with Java. The stable
release can be found at http://www.scriptics.com/java.
The source code is distributed under a BSD style license, so you
are free to use it for anything you like.
There are two implementations of the Tcl/Java API. The first is
called Tcl Blend, it provides access to a JVM from inside a Tcl
interpreter using JNI. The second implementation is called Jacl, it
is a Tcl interpreter written entirely in Java. These two
implementations provide the flexibility needed to make scripting
work in just about any situation.
For instance, if you have an existing C based application that you
would like to add Java support to, you could torture yourself by
trying to learn JNI, or you could just load Tcl Blend and Java and
start working on your application instead of the terror that is
JNI.
If you have a Java application that you would like to extend with a
scripting language, you could use Jacl. Jacl is written in Java, so
it is very easy to incorporate into an existing Java application.
You just add the .jar files to your CLASSPATH and it is up and
running!
Both of these implementation also provide a great way to regression
test a Java application. Here is a quick example that dynamically
allocates a Java string in Tcl code and then calls the charAt()
method of the String class to make sure it returns the letter
J.
test 1.1 {make sure the java.lang.String.charAt() method
works} {
set s [java::new String "I am a Java String"]
$s charAt 7
} J
Since this is an interpreted scripting language, you don’t need to
compile anything! You just start up the interpreter, paste your
code into the shell, and presto you are calling methods on Java
objects.
cheers
Mo DeJong
Red Hat Inc