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tokenize.NL seems to be an empty line, as opposed to 
token.NEWLINE which is a logical line end. Insofar NL is 
comparable to COMMENT, since it has no semantic content and 
is ignorable by a parser.

1 a = \
2 2
3
4 b=4

emits these tokens:

1,0-1,1:        NAME    'a'
1,2-1,3:        OP      '='
2,0-2,1:        NUMBER  '2'
2,1-2,2:        NEWLINE '\012'
3,0-3,1:        NL      '\012'
4,0-4,1:        NAME    'b'
4,1-4,2:        OP      '='
4,2-4,3:        NUMBER  '4'
4,3-4,4:        NEWLINE '\012'
5,0-5,0:        ENDMARKER       ''