comparing substrings

Question

I would like to get the following code running, but the second test fails with

! Argument of \@secondoftwo has an extra }.

What do I miss?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xstring,ifthen}
\newcommand{\mytest}[1]{%
   \newcommand{\s}{\StrChar{#1}{3}}
   \newcommand{\x}{c}
   3rd charactor of input is: \s ~equal to \x \\
   1st test: \IfStrEq{\x}{c}{true}{false} \\
   2nd test: \IfStrEq{\s}{c}{true}{false}
}
\begin{document}
   \mytest{abcd}
\end{document}

Any help appreciated, thanks, Malte

Answer 1

You're not defining \s to be the third character, but rather to be the complicated set of instructions for printing the third character.

Use better xstring features:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xstring}
\newcommand{\mytest}[1]{%
   \StrChar{#1}{3}[\maltetest]%
   Third charactor of input is: \maltetest\ equals c\\
   Test: \IfStrEq{\maltetest}{c}{true}{false}%
}
\begin{document}
   \mytest{abcd}
\end{document}

This way \maltetest will exactly contain the third character of the input string.