[texhax] automatically broken tables

[Karl Berry]

Suppose I have a reasonably long list, and I want the contents typeset
in N columns of equal width.  And, here's the kicker, I don't want to
have to specify the end-of-rows myself.  Does LaTeX have a package for
this?

For example, using a hypothetical autotable environment:
\begin[3]{autotable}
entry1  \somecommand
entry2  \somecommand
entry3  \somecommand
entry4  \somecommand
entry5  \somecommand
\end{autotable}

would output something like:

entry1        entry2        entry3
entry4        entry5

I don't care what \somecommand is, \> or \\ or \foobar or whatever.  The
point is that it's the same command on each line.

This idea eases maintaining changeable lists, since you don't have to
manually update the intercolumn/interrow commands when the list changes.

Paul Abrahams and I wrote a variant of such a thing for Eplain
(\makecolumns), but I haven't been able to find an equivalent for LaTeX
despite much searching, online and otherwise.  (The Eplain code would be
difficult to cast into a LaTeX context.)  I feel sure it's out there,
though.

Help?

Thanks,
karl