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From: rom@xor.Eng.Sun.COM (Circuit Group)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: simple tex/latex question/puzzler/quiz
Message-ID: <4221@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 10 Dec 90 06:37:54 GMT
Sender: news@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM
Lines: 35


I'm stuck; any help is welcome.
-------------------------------------------
\documentstyle{article}
\begin{document}
\def\macro1{apple}
\def\macro2{\macro1}
\ifx \macro1\macro2 truetext \else falsetext \fi
macro1\macro1 end
macro2\macro2 end
some text here.
\end{document}
--------------------------------------------
produces:
falsetext
macro1appleend macro2appleend
some text here.
-------------------------------------------

It appears that \ifx is not expanding the macro \macro1, does this
make sense?  How can I get an if statement that expands macros until
its just text? Am I doing this the wrong way?

I'm trying to write a .sty file and so I don't think that I can use
\ifthen.  ANY HELP WILL BE APPRECIATED.

BTW are there any books other than the ones by Knuth and Lamport that
explain this stuff; I have both books and find the one by Knuth to be
cryptic, wereas the one by Lamport does not give enough information.

Thanks.
-Ram
--
-Rom
rom@xor.sun.com