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Feb 2, 2012 at 3:41 comment added Bruno Le Floch Odd. You are right, @morbusg. I really need to study those macros someday. I guess the only true thing that remains in what I've said is that each line is processed individually, not the whole table at once (\cr is defined to end as roughly \crcr\egroup\egroup, ending the \halign). Memory-wise, it's more efficient. Speed-wise, it's probably irrelevant.
Feb 1, 2012 at 23:03 comment added morbusg @Bruno: I just checked it out: \tabalign calls \m@ketabbox, which in turn calls \ialign. I got to admit though that I don't quite follow what's happening in those macros...
Jan 31, 2012 at 21:42 comment added Bruno Le Floch You are right. I think tabbing is based on \tabalign (aka \+), though. Neither use \halign I believe. Instead, they require you to give an example line, then model each line on that initial one. That means lines are treated one at a time.
Jan 31, 2012 at 13:18 comment added morbusg @Bruno: seeing how tabbing is a LaTeX thing, I find it highly unlikely that Knuth would mention it in the TeXbook. But you're right, I have a vague memory of something along those lines being mentioned. Thing is, if memory serves, at least \+ uses \halign nevertheless.
Jan 31, 2012 at 13:06 comment added Bruno Le Floch It is surely more memory efficient since halign requires TeX to read the whole table in memory before outputting anything. Knuth mentions that somewhere in the TeXbook as a reason to use tabbing.
Jan 31, 2012 at 11:39 history answered morbusg CC BY-SA 3.0