puts

NAME

puts - Write to a channel

SYNOPSIS

puts ?-nonewline? ?channelId? string

DESCRIPTION

Writes the characters given by string to the channel given by channelId. ChannelId must be a channel identifier such as returned from a previous invocation of open or socket. It must have been opened for output. If no channelId is specified then it defaults to stdout. Puts normally outputs a newline character after string, but this feature may be suppressed by specifying the -nonewline switch.

SCL Extension

stdout refers to the standard output channel that is used by all programmes to display or print information to a console window. That is, a DOS window under windows 95/98/NT or a command window or xterm window under UNIX.

When running the TCL interpreter in Surpac (and other Surpac products) there is no concept of a standard output window. So, when puts is used with no explicit output channel id, the information is sent directly to the Surpac message window.

If puts is used with an explicit channel id then is behaviour is no different to that normally exhibited in the standard TCL interpreter.

Newline characters in the output are translated by puts to platform-specific end-of-line sequences according to the current value of the -translation option for the channel (for example, on PCs newlines are normally replaced with carriage-return-linefeed sequences; on Macintoshes newlines are normally replaced with carriage-returns). See the fconfigure manual entry for a discussion on ways in which fconfigure will alter output.

Tcl buffers output internally, so characters written with puts may not appear immediately on the output file or device; Tcl will normally delay output until the buffer is full or the channel is closed. You can force output to appear immediately with the flush command.

When the output buffer fills up, the puts command will normally block until all the buffered data has been accepted for output by the operating system. If channelId is in nonblocking mode then the puts command will not block even if the operating system cannot accept the data. Instead, Tcl continues to buffer the data and writes it in the background as fast as the underlying file or device can accept it. The application must use the Tcl event loop for nonblocking output to work; otherwise Tcl never finds out that the file or device is ready for more output data. It is possible for an arbitrarily large amount of data to be buffered for a channel in nonblocking mode, which could consume a large amount of memory. To avoid wasting memory, nonblocking I/O should normally be used in an event-driven fashion with the fileevent command (don't invoke puts unless you have recently been notified via a file event that the channel is ready for more output data).

KEYWORDS

channel, newline, output, write

Copyright © 1993 The Regents of the University of California.
Copyright © 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Copyright © 1995-1997 Roger E. Critchlow Jr.