[tex-k] The four numeric non-numeric macros in tex.web

[Doug McKenna]

I've been working on a program that combines TANGLE and CTANGLE, but which outputs formatted and indented Pascal or C source code, and (optionally) preserves comments and module names and WEB strings (as comments) as well.  I've been testing it on "tex.web" and other ".web" or ".w" files, and using it to analyze various properties of its input file(s), output statistics, etc.

In "tex.web" ...


  @d mem_top==30000 {largest index in the |mem| array dumped by \.{INITEX};
    must be substantially larger than |mem_bot| and not greater than |mem_max|}

  @d min_halfword==0 {smallest allowable value in a |halfword|}

  @d max_halfword==65535 {largest allowable value in a |halfword|}

  @d deplorable==100000 {more than |inf_bad|, but less than |awful_bad|}


... appear to be the only non-numeric macros that have pure, single-token numeric definitions.

Is there some subtle reason these four non-numeric macros (using "==") are not numeric macros (using "=")?  There's no forward references for them that I can see.

Typos?  Just wondering.


Doug McKenna