scripting language newbie - compatibility

[Cameron Laird]

In article <8mov1c$jdo$2 at newshost.accu.uu.nl>,
Martijn Faassen <m.faassen at vet.uu.nl> wrote:
>Paul Duffin <pduffin at hursley.ibm.com> wrote:
>[snip]
>> Actually you can generate byte compiled versions of Tcl which you can
>> distribute but you need to use a commercial package called TclPro to
>> do that. It is certainly not as easy as Python but pre byte compiling Tcl
>> code is not as useful as pre compiled Python code because of Tcl's dynamic
>> nature.
>
>How would Tcl be more dynamic than Python? (you seem to be 
>implying this) And how does a language's dynamic nature stop it from
>being (usefully) byte-compiled?
>
>Perhaps you mean Tcl is more dynamic on the syntactic level somehow?
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Tcl does a different kind of metaprogramming.

In Tcl, it's considered good style to write new control
structures, on the order of [do ... until] or [$handle
search $action].

Python's attitude is more that, "Guido has provided".
Control flow should involve only the elements that already
exist.  Sophisticated programming is a matter of object
definition, with the avant-garde occasionally indulging
in lambda and map.

An example is currently under discussion in comp.lang.tcl.
  $file close
resists significant byte compilation, because $file might
be *anything*--this command could, with little strain, have
the effect of printing the word, "close", to the screen.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html