You could always create something like this:

But IMO it clutters the code, and anyway "bparselist" is not a good name for exposing it. I was considering a more general name, ala "bdecode()" (either renaming bparselist(), or making it a wrapper).

For TAILQ, the man page is good enough IMO, but you need to understand the concept of linked-lists before.
We can discuss it on IRC if ypu want.
For the API, it's just about finding good names for functions and how to use it (its more a discussion than actual code though).