Re: [Dev-luatex] \mathchar feature request

the reason that \mathchar and \mathchardef does not produce an error message when processed outside mathmode is that Don decided that this is a good way to store numbers and to be used in programming. If that would suddnely raise error this would kill a lot of lowlevel code this is similar to other places, eg if you say \newbox\foo and then \foo instead of \box\foo you end up with a printed symbol (no error message, etc. In my opinion those optimizations can't be taken out of the TeX program without invalidating too much frank