Tohil Introduction

This reference describes Tohil, the Python module and Tcl package that are two great tastes that taste great together.

Tohil provides ways to exchange data and execute code between the Python and Tcl interpreters.

Python executes Tcl code using tohil.eval and tohil.call, and some minor variants.

Tcl executes Python code using tohil::eval, tohil::exec, and some variants.

Tohil’s tclobj and tcldict Python type objects provide Python access to Tcl’s native objects. Tclobjs and tcldicts behave in a very Python-like way. For instance, tclobjs can be used as numbers in calculations (if they contain valid numbers), treated as lists and accessed using familiar Python list syntax and methods, be automatically constructed by ingesting familiar Python data types, including recursive ingestion of lists, dicts, tuples, sets, etc.

Meanwhile, uncaught Tcl errors resulting from Tcl code invoked from Python are propagated back through Python as TclError exceptions, while uncaught exceptions raised from Python code invoked from Tcl are propagated back through Tcl as a Tcl error, the traceback interspersing Tcl and Python as the error/exception unwinds.