Am Fri, 8 May 2015 19:45:00 +0200 schrieb Mittelbach, Frank:

> On 08.05.2015 18:48, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
>> Is this a bug? Or simply something one must remember when using
>> c-type arguments?
> 
> 
> interesting question. On the whole we have not burdened expl3 with a lot 
> of checking to avoid it getting too slow, i.e., in case with very well 
> defined rules it is up to the programmer not to violate them
> 
> finite recursion (especially those that end up in quarks executing are 
> something we made usually an exception as they are pretty nasty.
> 
> as for the rule: "c" should not be misused to do an implicit "new" even 
> though that obviously works for some data types (if you know the 
> underlying coding). For the "prop" type that doesn't work as 
> \c_empty_prop" is quite different from \relax
> 
> so perhaps it is worth thinking of adding to functions for types like 
> that always a quick initial check to see that the variable is a prop or 
> rather at least not simply generated as a name from "c"
> 
> of course it would be a test happening each and every time
> 
> thoughts?

Well what bewildered me most is that the property list worked fine
and then \prop_show didn't show anything unusual. Perhaps a test for
existence could be added there.

-- 
Ulrike Fischer 
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/