Tcl's variables don't have types (except for whether or not they're really an associative array of variables — i.e., using the $foo(bar) syntax — for which you use array exists) but Tcl's values do. Well, somewhat. Tcl can mutate values between different types as it sees fit and does not expose this information[*]; all you can really do is check whether a value conforms to a particular type.
Such conformance checks are done with string is (where you need the -strict option, for ugly historical reasons):
if {[string is integer -strict $foo]} {
puts "$foo is an integer!"
}
if {[string is list $foo]} { # Only [string is] where -strict has no effect
puts "$foo is a list! (length: [llength $foo])"
if {[llength $foo]&1 == 0} {
# All dictionaries conform to lists with even length
puts "$foo is a dictionary! (entries: [dict size $foo])"
}
}
Note that all values conform to the type of strings; Tcl's values are always serializable.
[EDIT from comments]: For JSON serialization, it's possible to use dirty hacks to produce a “correct” serialization (strictly, putting everything in a string would be correct from Tcl's perspective but that's not precisely helpful to other languages) with Tcl 8.6. The code to do this, originally posted on Rosetta Code is:
package require Tcl 8.6
proc tcl2json value {
# Guess the type of the value; deep *UNSUPPORTED* magic!
regexp {^value is a (.*?) with a refcount} \
[::tcl::unsupported::representation $value] -> type
switch $type {
string {
# Skip to the mapping code at the bottom
}
dict {
set result "{"
set pfx ""
dict for {k v} $value {
append result $pfx [tcl2json $k] ": " [tcl2json $v]
set pfx ", "
}
return [append result "}"]
}
list {
set result "\["
set pfx ""
foreach v $value {
append result $pfx [tcl2json $v]
set pfx ", "
}
return [append result "\]"]
}
int - double {
return [expr {$value}]
}
booleanString {
return [expr {$value ? "true" : "false"}]
}
default {
# Some other type; do some guessing...
if {$value eq "null"} {
# Tcl has *no* null value at all; empty strings are semantically
# different and absent variables aren't values. So cheat!
return $value
} elseif {[string is integer -strict $value]} {
return [expr {$value}]
} elseif {[string is double -strict $value]} {
return [expr {$value}]
} elseif {[string is boolean -strict $value]} {
return [expr {$value ? "true" : "false"}]
}
}
}
# For simplicity, all "bad" characters are mapped to \u... substitutions
set mapped [subst -novariables [regsub -all {[][\u0000-\u001f\\""]} \
$value {[format "\\\\u%04x" [scan {& } %c]]}]]
return "\"$mapped\""
}
Warning: The above code is not supported. It depends on dirty hacks. It's liable to break without warning. (But it does work. Porting to Tcl 8.5 would require a tiny C extension to read out the type annotations.)
[*] Strictly, it does provide an unsupported interface for discovering the current type annotation of a value in 8.6 — as part of ::tcl::unsupported::representation — but that information is in a deliberately human-readable form and subject to change without announcement. It's for debugging, not code. Also, Tcl uses rather a lot of different types internally (e.g., cached command and variable names) that you won't want to probe for under normal circumstances; things are rather complex under the hood…
serialize [object $mykey1 [int $value] $mykey2 [float $bar]]and so on. Trying to deduce the type of a typeless value is error prone beyond repair. Not to mention obvious cases when I want the string "0123" to be really serialized as a string, not to be interpreted as 123 or 83 (see wiki.tcl.tk/498 for the fun stuff) – Jaquez