'\" '\" Copyright (c) 1993 The Regents of the University of California. '\" Copyright (c) 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc. '\" '\" See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution '\" of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES. '\" '\" RCS: @(#) $Id: case.n,v 1.1.1.1 2007/07/10 15:04:23 duncan Exp $ '\" .so man.macros .TH case n 7.0 Tcl "Tcl Built-In Commands" .BS '\" Note: do not modify the .SH NAME line immediately below! .SH NAME case \- Evaluate one of several scripts, depending on a given value .SH SYNOPSIS \fBcase\fI string \fR?\fBin\fR? \fIpatList body \fR?\fIpatList body \fR...? .sp \fBcase\fI string \fR?\fBin\fR? {\fIpatList body \fR?\fIpatList body \fR...?} .BE .SH DESCRIPTION .PP \fINote: the \fBcase\fI command is obsolete and is supported only for backward compatibility. At some point in the future it may be removed entirely. You should use the \fBswitch\fI command instead.\fR .PP The \fBcase\fR command matches \fIstring\fR against each of the \fIpatList\fR arguments in order. Each \fIpatList\fR argument is a list of one or more patterns. If any of these patterns matches \fIstring\fR then \fBcase\fR evaluates the following \fIbody\fR argument by passing it recursively to the Tcl interpreter and returns the result of that evaluation. Each \fIpatList\fR argument consists of a single pattern or list of patterns. Each pattern may contain any of the wild-cards described under \fBstring match\fR. If a \fIpatList\fR argument is \fBdefault\fR, the corresponding body will be evaluated if no \fIpatList\fR matches \fIstring\fR. If no \fIpatList\fR argument matches \fIstring\fR and no default is given, then the \fBcase\fR command returns an empty string. .PP Two syntaxes are provided for the \fIpatList\fR and \fIbody\fR arguments. The first uses a separate argument for each of the patterns and commands; this form is convenient if substitutions are desired on some of the patterns or commands. The second form places all of the patterns and commands together into a single argument; the argument must have proper list structure, with the elements of the list being the patterns and commands. The second form makes it easy to construct multi-line case commands, since the braces around the whole list make it unnecessary to include a backslash at the end of each line. Since the \fIpatList\fR arguments are in braces in the second form, no command or variable substitutions are performed on them; this makes the behavior of the second form different than the first form in some cases. .SH "SEE ALSO" switch(n) .SH KEYWORDS case, match, regular expression