LuaTeX's \textdir primitive fails a string-comparison test

Question

A demonstration of the problem by way of a minimal working example

I saved the following LaTeX code in the file ~/Test.tex.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\begin{document}
\the\textdir =%
\ifthenelse{\equal{\the\textdir}{TLT}}{TLT}{TRT}
\end{document}

The code prints out the content of the LuaTeX primitive \textdir register, an equality symbol, and then the string TLT if the contents of said register is TLT, and TRT otherwise.

I then executed the following commands in the Terminal.

> cd ~
> lualatex Test

As a consequence the file ~/Test.pdf was created. When opened in a PDF viewer, it showed "TLT=TRT".

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Questions

1. If \the\textdir expands to the string "TLT", why, then, does the conditional evaluate to the else case "TRT"?

2. How can I query the value of the \textdir register?

Answer 1

It is the same as \jobname and \string, it returns catcode 12 characters not catcode 11

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{ifthen}
\begin{document}
\the\textdir =%
\ifthenelse{\equal{\the\textdir}{\detokenize{TLT}}}{TLT}{TRT}
\end{document}