[tex-k] A218, A219: confusion of TeX's mouth and stomach

[胡亚捷 (Hu Yajie)]

Page A219, line -9 says

    `\length{argument}' expands to `8'.

but if you try the macro

    \def\length#1{{\count0=0 \getlength#1\end \number\count0}}
    \def\getlength#1{\ifx#1\end \let\next=\relax
    \else\advance\count0 by1 \let\next=\getlength\fi \next}

by saying

    \message{\length{argument}}
or  \edef\\{\length{argument}} \show\\
or  \count255=\length{argument} \showthe\count255

you get error messages. The \length macro doesn't expand to `8'; it expands
to a series of tokens that yield the result `8'. Some of the tokens are
handled in TeX's mouth and some in TeX's stomach, so it's not accurate to
say that `\length{argument}' expands to `8'.

Similarly, page A218, line 21 says

    TeX did all of the calculation by expanding the \primes macro

but the \primes macro contains assignments like \p=5 and \advance\n by-2
which are not carried out during macro expansion.

I'm not sure if other parts of The TeXbook contains similar errors.