resource -- Manipulate Macintosh resources

The resource command provides some generic operations for dealing with Macintosh resources. This command is only supported on the Macintosh platform. Each Macintosh file consists of two forks: a data fork and a resource fork. You use the normal open, puts, close, etc. commands to manipulate the data fork. You must use this command, however, to interact with the resource fork. Option indicates what resource command to perform. Any unique abbreviation for option is acceptable. The valid options are:

resource close rsrcRef: Closes the given resource reference (obtained from resource open). Resources from that resource file will no longer be available.
resource delete ?options? resourceType: This command will delete the resource specified by options and type resourceType (see RESOURCE TYPES below). The options give you several ways to specify the resource to be deleted.
-id resourceId: If the -id option is given the id resourceId (see RESOURCE IDS below) is used to specify the resource to be deleted. The id must be a number - to specify a name use the -name option.
-name resourceName: If -name is specified, the resource named resourceName will be deleted. If the -id is also provided, then there must be a resource with BOTH this name and this id. If no name is provided, then the id will be used regardless of the name of the actual resource.
-file resourceRef: If the -file option is specified then the resource will be deleted from the file pointed to by resourceRef. Otherwise the first resource with the given resourceName and or resourceId which is found on the resource file path will be deleted. To inspect the file path, use the resource files command.
resource files ?resourceRef?: If resourceRefis not provided, this command returns a Tcl list of the resource references for all the currently open resource files. The list is in the normal Macintosh search order for resources. If resourceRef is specified, the command will return the path to the file whose resource fork is represented by that token.
resource list resourceType ?resourceRef?: List all of the resources ids of type resourceType (see RESOURCE TYPES below). If resourceRef is specified then the command will limit the search to that particular resource file. Otherwise, all resource files currently opened by the application will be searched. A Tcl list of either the resource name's or resource id's of the found resources will be returned. See the RESOURCE IDS section below for more details about what a resource id is.
resource open fileName ?access?: Open the resource for the file fileName. Standard file access permissions may also be specified (see the reference page for open for details). A resource reference (resourceRef) is returned that can be used by the other resource commands. An error can occur if the file doesn't exist or the file does not have a resource fork. However, if you open the file with write permissions the file and/or resource fork will be created instead of generating an error.
resource read resourceType resourceId ?resourceRef?: Read the entire resource of type resourceType (see RESOURCE TYPES below) and the name or id of resourceId (see RESOURCE IDS below) into memory and return the result. If resourceRef is specified we limit our search to that resource file, otherwise we search all open resource forks in the application. It is important to note that most Macintosh resource use a binary format and the data returned from this command may have embedded NULLs or other non-ASCII data.
resource types ?resourceRef?: This command returns a Tcl list of all resource types (see RESOURCE TYPES below) found in the resource file pointed to by resourceRef. If resourceRef is not specified, it will return all the resource types found in every resource file currently opened by the application.
resource write ?options? resourceType data: This command will write the passed in data as a new resource of type resourceType (see RESOURCE TYPES below). Several options are available that describe where and how the resource is stored.
-id resourceId: If the -id option is given the id resourceId (see RESOURCE IDS below) is used for the new resource, otherwise a unique id will be generated that will not conflict with any existing resource. However, the id must be a number - to specify a name use the -name option.
-name resourceName: If -name is specified the resource will be named resourceName, otherwise it will have the empty string as the name.
-file resourceRef: If the -file option is specified then the resource will be written in the file pointed to by resourceRef, otherwise the most resently open resource will be used.
-force: If the target resource already exists, then by default Tcl will not overwrite it, but raise an error instead. Use the -force flag to force overwriting the extant resource.

RESOURCE TYPES

Resource types are defined as a four character string that is then mapped to an underlying id. For example, TEXT refers to the Macintosh resource type for text. The type STR# is a list of counted strings. All Macintosh resources must be of some type. See Macintosh documentation for a more complete list of resource types that are commonly used.

RESOURCE IDS

For this command the notion of a resource id actually refers to two ideas in Macintosh resources. Every place you can use a resource Id you can use either the resource name or a resource number. Names are always searched or returned in preference to numbers. For example, the resource list command will return names if they exist or numbers if the name is NULL.

PORTABILITY ISSUES

The resource command is only available on Macintosh.

PORTABILITY

Windows 10. Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2019. Windows 11. Windows Server 2022. Windows Server 2025.

AVAILABILITY

PTC MKS Toolkit for Power Users
PTC MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
PTC MKS Toolkit for Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Interoperability
PTC MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers
PTC MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-Bit Edition

resource
Manipulate Macintosh resources

Tclsh Built-In Commands

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION