'\"
'\" Copyright (c) 1993 The Regents of the University of California.
'\" Copyright (c) 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
'\" Copyright (c) 2000 Scriptics Corporation.
'\"
'\" See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
'\" of this file, and for a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES.
'\" 
.TH source n "" Tcl "Tcl Built-In Commands"
.so man.macros
.BS
'\" Note:  do not modify the .SH NAME line immediately below!
.SH NAME
source \- Evaluate a file or resource as a Tcl script
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBsource \fIfileName\fR
.sp
\fBsource\fR \fB\-encoding \fIencodingName fileName\fR
.BE
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
This command takes the contents of the specified file or resource
and passes it to the Tcl interpreter as a text script.  The return
value from \fBsource\fR is the return value of the last command
executed in the script.  If an error occurs in evaluating the contents
of the script then the \fBsource\fR command will return that error.
If a \fBreturn\fR command is invoked from within the script then the
remainder of the file will be skipped and the \fBsource\fR command
will return normally with the result from the \fBreturn\fR command.
.PP
The end-of-file character for files is
.QW \e32
(^Z) for all platforms.
The source command will read files up to this character.  This
restriction does not exist for the \fBread\fR or \fBgets\fR commands,
allowing for files containing code and data segments (scripted documents).
If you require a
.QW ^Z
in code for string comparison, you can use
.QW \e032
or
.QW \eu001a ,
which will be safely substituted by the Tcl interpreter into
.QW ^Z .
.PP
A leading BOM (Byte order mark) contained in the file is ignored for unicode encodings (utf-8, unicode).
.PP
The \fB\-encoding\fR option is used to specify the encoding of
the data stored in \fIfileName\fR.  When the \fB\-encoding\fR option
is omitted, the system encoding is assumed.
.SH EXAMPLE
.PP
Run the script in the file \fBfoo.tcl\fR and then the script in the
file \fBbar.tcl\fR:
.PP
.CS
\fBsource\fR foo.tcl
\fBsource\fR bar.tcl
.CE
.PP
Alternatively:
.PP
.CS
foreach scriptFile {foo.tcl bar.tcl} {
    \fBsource\fR $scriptFile
}
.CE
.SH "SEE ALSO"
file(n), cd(n), encoding(n), info(n)
.SH KEYWORDS
file, script
