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Date:         Sat, 6 Dec 2008 13:08:55 +1030
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From: Will Robertson <wspr81@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: expl3 "token list" terminology
To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
In-Reply-To:  <18745.37877.845526.230207@morse.mittelbach-online.de>
Precedence: list
Status: R

On 06/12/2008, at 7:19 AM, Frank Mittelbach wrote:

> I'm coming somewhat late to this discussion, but ...
>
> TeX (and as such expl3) deals with tokens and the replacement text  
> of a macro
> without arguments is a list of tokens and not a list of characters  
> or a string
> or...
>
> the contents of a toks register too is a list of tokens
>
> they are not the same in the way they can be accessed or manipulated  
> but their
> content is the same.

The more this is discussed the more I think that toks and tlp are fine  
names, and I wasn't thinking about changing them when I brought this up.

I was just wondering if there was a short way to distinguish between  
what sort of material a toks and a tlp can contain. (I must have  
worded this particularly poorly.)

So in the documentation when we write

   \toks_set:Nn <toks> {<token list>}

cf.

   \tlp_set:Nn <tlp> {<token list>}

there might be some way of distinguishing the token list in the former  
compared to the latter.

* * *

I'm still thinking there's nothing we can do but refer to the contents  
of both as "token lists" and just mention the differences at the  
beginning of l3tlp and l3toks.

Will