5.5 Bug or my ignorance about TCL variables in Xlate

Ok, will try to make this short.

Recently found that TCL variables used in a translation are still intact after the translation is finished.  

I always thought the TCL variables used in Pre Procs were “reset” or wiped out after each message translation completed.

Here is the example:

Manipulating date/time stamp.  If hour and minutes equal 0000, then change to 000100.  Make it 1 minute past midnight and zero seconds.

Take 20091031000017 and make it 20091031000100.

But, we had a date/time field that came out looking like this after a few days: 20091026000100200910260001002009102600010020091026000100200910310001002009103100010020091103000100

Here is Pre Proc TCL code in a COPY statement in Xlate.

set datein7 [lindex $xlateInVals 0]

set datein7 [csubstr $datein7 0 8]

append datein8 $datein7 “000100”

set xlateOutVals $datein8

When run thru XLT testing tool, all works OK.  

But, as you can see, after a few days in prod it kept the date/ time stamp from the 26th, 31st, and the 3rd in the datein8 variable and kept appending the next date/time stamp.

Had to add this set command as 1st line in code to stop the undesirable results:

set datein8 “”

So, is this normal (my ignorance) or a bug in Cloverleaf 5.5 version?

Help,

Sam 😳