lassign(n) Tcl Built-In Commands lassign(n)

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# [NAME](#NAME)

lassign - Assign list elements to variables

# [SYNOPSIS](#SYNOPSIS)

**lassign list** ?*varName ...*?

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```

# [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION)

This command treats the value *list* as a list and assigns successive elements from that list to the variables given by the *varName* arguments in order. If there are more variable names than list elements, the remaining variables are set to the empty string. If there are more list elements than variables, a list of unassigned elements is returned.

# [EXAMPLES](#EXAMPLES)

An illustration of how multiple assignment works, and what happens when there are either too few or too many elements.

```
lassign {a b c} x y z       ;# Empty return
puts $x                     ;# Prints "a"
puts $y                     ;# Prints "b"
puts $z                     ;# Prints "c"
lassign {d e} x y z         ;# Empty return
puts $x                     ;# Prints "d"
puts $y                     ;# Prints "e"
puts $z                     ;# Prints ""
lassign {f g h i} x y       ;# Returns "h i"
puts $x                     ;# Prints "f"
puts $y                     ;# Prints "g"
```

The **lassign** command has other uses. It can be used to create the analogue of the “shift” command in many shell languages like this:

```
set ::argv [lassign $::argv argumentToReadOff]
```

# [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO)

[list(n)](/man/os/tcl/list.n), [lappend(n)](/man/os/tcl/lappend.n), [ledit(n)](/man/os/tcl/ledit.n), [lindex(n)](/man/os/tcl/lindex.n), [linsert(n)](/man/os/tcl/linsert.n), [llength(n)](/man/os/tcl/llength.n), [lmap(n)](/man/os/tcl/lmap.n), [lpop(n)](/man/os/tcl/lpop.n), [lrange(n)](/man/os/tcl/lrange.n), [lremove(n)](/man/os/tcl/lremove.n), [lrepeat(n)](/man/os/tcl/lrepeat.n), [lreplace(n)](/man/os/tcl/lreplace.n), [lreverse(n)](/man/os/tcl/lreverse.n), [lsearch(n)](/man/os/tcl/lsearch.n), [lseq(n)](/man/os/tcl/lseq.n), [lset(n)](/man/os/tcl/lset.n), [lsort(n)](/man/os/tcl/lsort.n)

# [KEYWORDS](#KEYWORDS)

assign, element, list, multiple, set, variable

8.5 Tcl

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Document: lassign(n) from tcl 9.1.0-r1 (Chainguard OS)
Source: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tcl/Tcl/9.1.0/tcl9.1.0-src.tar.gz