[add information about dict create here]
Recently on comp.lang.tcl, someone asked how to create an empty dict, and the reply was, basically,
set e [dict create]
Certainly there are other ways to set the variable to the equivalent of an empty dict
set e "" set e [list] set e {}
However, these latter methods don't convey to the reader of the program that you are expecting to perform dict operations on the variable. Probably not a big deal, though.