Syntax is part of grammar.

Not all of it. They are not interchangeable or two sides of the same coin. That's all. You need syntax to then establish a grammar.

We're talking about a programming language here, of course.

Admittedly, you could say that Tcl is a language in the sense that english is (I was genuinely just snarking in my original comment). Because Tcl (unlike Java or C or Forth or Lisp) is context-sensitive -- the only way to know if a Tcl program uses its syntax correctly is to run it!

With Java/Forth etc., you can tell whether the syntax is being used correctly because these languages have a context-free grammar. This has advantages.

Above all these criticisms are why I think people should not learn Tcl as a serious endeavour if it can be avoided; it should be left to history with perl4.

> Because Tcl (unlike Java or C or Forth or Lisp) is context-sensitive -- the only way to know if a Tcl program uses its syntax correctly is to run it!

I mentioned in my other comment how Lisp and Java are much closer to Tcl than you think they are. But that's true of Forth as well. Forth IMMEDIATE words are equal in power to Common Lisp reader macros, they also allow you to define arbitrary custom syntax – you can even define some custom syntax and then immediately start using it. Just like Common Lisp, it is impossible to know whether a Forth program uses its syntax correctly without running it through a complete Forth runtime environment.

Where are you supposedly deriving your definitions from?

I see your "supposedly" and I'm done with you.