Conditionals within captions

Question

I have defined a conditional using the ifthen package as:

\newcommand{\Switch}[1] { \ifthenelse{\equal{#1}{1}}{Test1}{Test2} }

Running this command works without problem. However, if I try to place it within a Figure Caption, it produces an error (i.e., \Switch{1} and \caption{Example text} work fine, but \caption{\Switch{1}} does not).

Is this expected behavior? How do I work around it to produce a conditional caption?

Answer 1

The \ifthenelse command appears to be fragile? \caption{\protect\Switch{1}} works.

Answer 2

As a modern alternative, you can use the commands from the etoolbox package:

\newcommand*{\Switch}[1]{\ifnumequal{#1}{1}{Test1}{Test2}}

Or the xparse package:

\ExplSyntaxOn
\NewDocumentCommand \Switch { m } {
  \int_compare:nNnTF { #1 } = { \c_one } {
    Test1
  } {
    Test2
  }
}
\ExplSyntaxOff