Re: TeX syntax?

Jim Hill <gjthill@gmail.com>
25 Feb 2007 12:49:39 -0500

          From comp.compilers
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Re: TeX syntax? adrian@cs.rhul.ac.uk (A Johnstone) (2007-02-09)
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| List of all articles for this month |
From: Jim Hill <gjthill@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 25 Feb 2007 12:49:39 -0500
Organization: Compilers Central
References: 07-02-024
Keywords: macros
Posted-Date: 25 Feb 2007 12:49:39 EST

Russell Shaw asked for:
> something resembling the BNF of Knuth's TeX typesetting syntax?
> What symbols are fundamental, and what ones are derived?


It doesn't really parse at all, and its lexical entities are defined at
runtime, by the input it's lexing: spelling and boundaries are defined
and quite commonly, even for fundamental symbols, redefined several
times, in the input files themselves.


Most people could agree these would be bad things in a programming language.

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