On 04/12/2008, at 3:03 AM, Arno Trautmann wrote: > why is \if:w, but \if_meaning:NN, \if_cs_meaning:NN and > \if_token_eq:NN? > The syntax is the same in all cases – I would have expected :w after > all. \if:w corresponds to the primitive \if, whereas \if_meaning:NN and so on are \ifx. From TeX by Topic: > After \if TEX will expand until two unexpandable tokens are > obtained, so it is necessary to prefix expandable control sequences > and active characters with \noexpand when testing them with \if. So while \if does take two tokens as input, it will also expands them in a weird kind of way; actually, it might even be possible to name it \if:ff ! But I'm not really for that idea :) * * * Regarding the three different names for \ifx -- yes, that needs to be cleaned up; but in the end there still may well be more than one name for it. (Well, I'm not opposed to the idea, at least.) Cheers, Will