documentation syntax examples are different than actual results

[xoich]

in the section BACKSLASH SUBSTITUTION it says

set \*a \\{foo
The first argument to set will be \*a and the second argument will be {foo.

But it seems the variable will be called *a and the result is \{foo

It later says:

set a {{abc}
the second argument to set will be {abc.

But the opening brace is never closed, so that is an incomplete tcl command

[msteveb]

Yes, that doesn't look right. How is this?

If a backslash is followed by something other than one of the options described above,
then the backslash is dropped and the following character is treated as an ordinary character
without any special processing. For example, in the command

    set \*a \{foo

The first argument to set will be *a and the second argument will be {foo.

If an argument is enclosed in braces, then backslash sequences inside the argument
are parsed but no substitution occurs (except for backslash-newline): the backslash sequence
is passed through to the argument as is, without making any special interpretation of the
characters in the backslash sequence. In particular, backslashed braces are not counted
in locating the matching right brace that terminates the argument. For example, in the command

    set a {\{abc}

the second argument to set will be \{abc.

[xoich]

yes it looks right now. There seems to be a problem with escaping in the manual source. By the way, what format is the manual and how is it compiled? Thank you

[msteveb]

It's asciidoc. You can see how it is built in the Makefile here:

Tcl.html: jim_tcl.txt ./make-index
    /usr/local/bin/jimsh ./make-index $> $^ | asciidoc --attribute footer-style=none -d manpage - >$@

Yes, backslashes are very troublesome

[xoich]

thanks. By the way, I really like the way that this man page succinctly explains the basics of Tcl. I wonder if it would be an idea to include it or point to it in the manual.

[msteveb]

Possibly, but where to stop? And how to keep them in sync (if external links go away or change)?
I'm open to anyone who wants to help improve the documentation.

[msteveb]

Fixed in #280