I’ve spent too much time on this but it was fun.
Here’s what I suggest:
1) There is a typo, (s)he never meant x02, they meant x20 (space).
And what you actually get is:
If there is no length to line (empty) OR line is a single space OR line is all spaces, then set line to a period OTHERWISE split the line into words (in list form after removing all trailing spaces).
Excercise:
hcitcl>set line {}
hcitcl>if {![clength $line]} {echo empty}
empty
hcitcl>set line “this is a line”
this is a line
hcitcl>if {![clength $line]} {echo empty}
hcitcl>set line [split [string trimright $line x20] ” “]
this is a line
hcitcl>foreach item $line {echo >$item<}
>this<
>is<
>a<
>line<
hcitcl>
But to answer the orginal question, it is doing the following:
If there is no length to line (empty) OR line is a single space OR line is all characters, then set line to a period OTHERWISE split the line into words based on spaces (in list form after removing all trailing characters).