Interpreted C++, Object Oriented Tcl, What next?

Tcl is an interpreted high level language suitable for scripts, small scale systems, prototypes and embedding in larger applications. C++ is a powerful compiled language that provides support for object oriented programming and is suitable for building large complex systems. But what if you could move from C++ to Tcl and back again with the ease of an object reference and a dynamically bound function? This paper describes an extension to Tcl, or an extension to C++ depending on your perspective, that makes it possible to:

• use object oriented programming concepts in Tcl
• inherit from C++ classes (with dynamic binding of methods) in Tcl
• instantiate C++ classes from Tcl
• invoke methods upon C++ objects from Tcl
• delete C++ objects from Tcl
• pass Tcl objects to C++ for method invocation and deletion.

The name of this extension (Tcl++ was rejected) is Object Tcl.