I've "inherited" some Tcl code, and while I worked through some tutorials and can make sense out of the language, my own Tcl constructs lack a certain... finesse.

For example, I have this code:

```
puts "Column 'name': [ $queryRs getString name ]"

```

`$queryRs` is the result set of a SQL query. The `[ $queryRs getString name ]` construct retrieves the content of the table column "name" from the current row in the result set. If the database field is NULL, the `puts` does not print anything.

I would like to print a "default" string instead, i.e. if `[ $queryRs getString name ]` results in nothing, I'd like to replace it with `"--"`.

Now, I could do something like this:

```
set nameVar "[ $queryRs getString name ]"
if { [ string length $nameVar ] == 0 } {
    set nameVar "--"
}
puts "Column 'name': $nameVar"

```

But there **has** to be a more compact solution, something that can be done inline instead of adding four lines and a temporary variable. Help, please?