### NAME

Tcl_GetIndexFromObj - lookup string in table of keywords

### SYNOPSIS

#include <tcl.h>
int
Tcl_GetIndexFromObj(interp, objPtr, tablePtr, msg, flags, indexPtr)

### ARGUMENTS

Tcl_Interp *interp (in)
  Interpreter to use for error reporting; if NULL, then no message is provided on errors.

Tcl_Obj *objPtr (in/out)
  The string value of this object is used to search through tablePtr. The internal representation is modified to hold the index of the matching table entry.

char **tablePtr (in)
  An array of null-terminated strings. The end of the array is marked by a NULL string pointer.

char *msg (in)
  Null-terminated string describing what is being looked up, such as option. This string is included in error messages.

int flags (in)
  OR-ed combination of bits providing additional information for operation. The only bit that is currently defined is TCL_EXACT.

int *indexPtr (out)
  The index of the string in tablePtr that matches the value of objPtr is returned here.

### DESCRIPTION

This procedure provides an efficient way for looking up keywords, switch names, option names, and similar things where the value of an object must be one of a predefined set of values. ObjPtr is compared against each of the strings in tablePtr to find a match. A match occurs if objPtr's string value is identical to one of the strings in tablePtr, or if it is a unique abbreviation for exactly one of the strings in tablePtr and the TCL_EXACT flag was not specified; in either case the index of the matching entry is stored at *indexPtr and TCL_OK is returned.

If there is no matching entry, TCL_ERROR is returned and an error message is left in interp's result if interp isn't NULL. Msg is included in the error message to indicate what was being looked up. For example, if msg is option the error message will have a form like bad option "firt": must be first, second, or third.

If Tcl_GetIndexFromObj completes successfully it modifies the internal representation of objPtr to hold the address of the table and the index of the matching entry. If Tcl_GetIndexFromObj is invoked again with the same objPtr and tablePtr arguments (e.g. during a reinvocation of a Tcl command), it returns the matching index immediately without having to redo the lookup operation. Note: Tcl_GetIndexFromObj assumes that the entries in tablePtr are static: they must not change between invocations.

### SEE ALSO

Tcl_WrongNumArgs

### KEYWORDS

index, object, table lookup

    Copyright © 1997 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
    Copyright © 1995-1997 Roger E. Critchlow Jr.