When comparing CFML vs Tcl, the Slant community recommends Tcl for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Tcl is ranked 31st while CFML is ranked 73rd. The most important reason people chose Tcl is:
Unlike *sh Tcl has a rich standard library.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Rapid application development
Get a web app up and running fast with stuff built right in to CFML! Frameworks make it even faster but lengthen the learning curve.
Pro Easily query a database
Newcomers can use an html-like syntax to query a database. Advanced developers can use a scripted syntax to execute stored procedures.
Pro Multiple engine implementations available
There are multiple engine implementations available including Adobe ColdFusion, Lucee, New Atlanta BlueDragon, Railo, and Open BlueDragon among others.
Pro Quick document and image manupulation
ColdFusion can quickly interact with PDFs , Spreadsheets to read/manipulate the data. There are a lot of built in functions to manipulate images quickly.
Pro Standard library
Unlike *sh Tcl has a rich standard library.
Pro Sane quoting rules
Unlike in sh you don't need to quote your variable substitutions ('"$1"').
Expanding of arguments occurs mostly explicit and if yet expected in-place (e. g. using eval
or subst
) it follows strict and well clear rules.
So exec test $argv
would execute test with single argument.
And appending {*} before $argv
would execute test with all arguments (list expansion).
Pro Cross-platform
With a little care you can have the same script work on Linux, *BSD, OS X and Windows.
Pro Widely available
You can expect a reasonably recent version of Tcl to either installed or available in the repositories of any popular open source *nix.
Pro Everything is a string
Tcl can operate at the same level of abstraction as the POSIX shell, which makes it easier to manipulate the output of other programs.
Pro Tk and Expect
Pro Standalone packages
Tcl enables easy deployment through self-contained binaries known as starpacks.
Pro Rich scripting capabilities on a single line
Want to run something 5 times? Here you go: set i 0; time { puts done-[incr i] } 5
If you need real conditional cycle? Not a problem: for {set ready 0; set i 1} {$i <= 100 && !$ready} {incr i} { if {[exec do-some-thing] eq "ready" } {set ready 1} }
Want to measure performance of something or repeat it max 300 times and not longer than 1 seconds? Very simple: timerate { after 20 } 1000 300
How about notifying yourself when some http-server is back online? Sure thing: while {[catch { close [socket localhost 80] }]} { after 1000 }; puts "\7\7\7ONLINE!"
And you can do it also fully asynchronously using events etc.