Is something like “or” acceptable in conditional tests defined by \newif?

Question

I am using conditional tests in my .cls file which has two options "final" and "draft". I am rather familiar with conditional tests but I am just curious to know how to define the "or" in the following code.

\if@‎final OR ‎\if@draft FINAL TEST ‎‎ ‎\else NO TEST‎ ‎\fi\fi

Edit:

I have tried the following code and have gotten the desired result, so I just want to know whether I CAN use something like "\or" in \newif conditional or not. In other word, does such a command (I mean \or) exist at all?

‎\documentclass[‎draft‎]‎{article}‎
‎\makeatletter‎
‎‎\newif\if@‎final‎
‎\@‎final‎false‎
‎\DeclareOption{‎final‎}{\@‎final‎true}‎
‎\newif\if@‎draft‎‎
‎\@‎draft‎false‎
‎\DeclareOption{‎draft‎}{\@‎draft‎true}‎‎
‎‎\ProcessOptions‎‎‎
‎\newcommand{‎\mytest‎}‎{\if@‎final FINAL TEST ‎\else‎  ‎\if@draft FINAL TEST ‎‎ ‎\else ‎NO ‎TEST‎ ‎\fi\fi‎‎‎‎‎}‎‎
‎‎\makeatother‎
‎\begin{document}‎
‎\mytest‎
‎‎\end{document}

Answer 1

The basis for your OR statement looks like this:

\if@final TRUE\else\if@draft TRUE\else FALSE\fi\fi

The following minimal example illustrates this:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\makeatletter
\newif\if@final \newif\if@draft
\newcommand{\test}{\if@final TRUE\else\if@draft TRUE\else FALSE\fi\fi}
% final = false; draft = false
\@finalfalse \@draftfalse \test

% final = true; draft = false
\@finaltrue \@draftfalse \test

% final = false; draft = true
\@finalfalse \@drafttrue \test

% final = true; draft = true
\@finaltrue \@drafttrue \test
\end{document}

yielding the OR truth table:

Comparable output is obtained by using booleans defined via etoolbox:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{etoolbox}% http://ctan.org/pkg/etoolbox
\begin{document}
\makeatletter
%\newif\if@final \newif\if@draft
\newbool{@final} \newbool{@draft}
\newcommand{\test}{\ifboolexpr{bool {@final} or bool {@draft}}{TRUE}{FALSE}}
% final = false; draft = false
\boolfalse{@final} \boolfalse{@draft} \test

% final = true; draft = false
\booltrue{@final} \boolfalse{@draft} \test

% final = false; draft = true
\boolfalse{@final} \booltrue{@draft} \test

% final = true; draft = true
\booltrue{@final} \booltrue{@draft} \test
\end{document}

Of course, you can change the TRUE/FALSE output to whatever you want.

---

As Marco remarked, etoolbox's boolean flags provide a front-end to LaTeX's \newif. As such you can either define them using \newbool or \newif. See section 3.5 Boolean Flags (p 12 onward) of the etoolbox documentation.

Answer 2

• Your example doesn't implement a class so I'm assuming you're trying to implement a package.
• If the user-defined-command doesn't rely on arguments, then it's more efficient if you define it using \edef.

In the following, I show how to implement the parsing with the pgfopts package, which makes pgfkeys-style option parsing available. I find it much easier to use in general than using other packages that provide key=value parsing. More information about pgfkeys may be found in the pgf manual.

\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}[2009/09/24]
\ProvidesPackage{mypackage}[2011/12/30]

\makeatletter
% Define the main TeX switches
\newif\ifmypackage@final      
\newif\ifmypackage@draft      

\RequirePackage{pgfopts}
% Define the final and draft options. Both default to false.
\pgfkeys{/mypackage/.cd,                                    
         final/.is if=mypackage@final,                      
         draft/.is if=mypackage@draft,                      
         final=false,                                       
         draft=false}
\ProcessPgfPackageOptions{/mypackage}

\edef\myfinal@final@test{%
    \ifmypackage@draft%
        DRAFT and FINAL.%
    \else%
        FINAL only.%
    \fi%
}

\edef\myfinal@nonfinal@test{%
    \ifmypackage@draft%
        DRAFT only.
    \else%
        NOTHING, you lose.%
    \fi%
}

\edef\mytest{%
    \ifmypackage@final%
        \myfinal@final@test%
    \else%
        \myfinal@nonfinal@test%
    \fi%
}
\makeatother