Handling a conditionally defined newif, nested in an ifx conditional?

Question

Consider this MWE:

\documentclass[11pt]{book}

\def\entrytest{WORD}
\def\entrycurrent{NOWORD}
% \def\entrycurrent{WORD}

\ifx\entrytest\entrycurrent
  \newif\ifsomething
  \somethingfalse
\fi

\ifx\entrytest\entrycurrent
  \ifsomething\typeout{Yes}\else\typeout{No}\fi
\fi

\begin{document}
\end{document}

In the current case, I would have expected that \ifsomething\typeout... would have been "protected" by the \ifx that wraps it; but something is not right, because the code halts with:

...
No
! Extra \fi.
l.15 \fi

? 

Of course, if \def\entrycurrent{WORD} so all of the \ifxs run in the "true" branch, then everything works as expected.

So how should I go about handling uses of \newifs which may have been themselves conditionally defined?

Answer 1

In the second \ifx\entrytest\entrycurrent, \ifsomething is undefined, so the first \fi matches \ifx and the second \fi is out of place.

It's not the macro name that makes something a conditional; only a token that is defined and is equivalent to one of the primitive conditionals counts.

What \newif\ifsomething does is

\let\ifsomething\iffalse
\def\somethingtrue{\let\ifsomething\iftrue}
\def\somethingfalse{\let\ifsomething\iffalse}

You probably want something like

\newif\ifsomething
\somethingtrue

\ifx\entrytest\entrycurrent
  \somethingfalse
\fi

\ifx\entrytest\entrycurrent
  \ifsomething\typeout{Yes}\else\typeout{No}\fi
\fi

but it's unclear why you would do this to begin with.