Do the \parindent and \noindent cancel each other out?

Question

I was reading through the \maketitle command provided by the default article.cls class and it has the following code:

\newcommand\maketitle{\par
    \begingroup
      \renewcommand\thefootnote{\@fnsymbol\c@footnote}%
      \def\@makefnmark{\rlap{\@textsuperscript{\normalfont\@thefnmark}}}%
      \long\def\@makefntext##1{\parindent 1em\noindent
              \hb@[email protected]{%
                \hss\@textsuperscript{\normalfont\@thefnmark}}##1}%
      \if@twocolumn
        \ifnum \col@number=\@ne
          \@maketitle
        \else
          \twocolumn[\@maketitle]%
        \fi
      \else
      \newpage
        \global\@topnum\z@   % Prevents figures from going at top of page.
        \@maketitle
      \fi
      \thispagestyle{plain}\@thanks
    \endgroup
    \setcounter{footnote}{0}%
    \global\let\thanks\relax
    \global\let\maketitle\relax
    \global\let\@maketitle\relax
    \global\let\@thanks\@empty
    \global\let\@author\@empty
    \global\let\@date\@empty
    \global\let\@title\@empty
    \global\let\title\relax
    \global\let\author\relax
    \global\let\date\relax
    \global\let\and\relax
  }

What I am specifically interested in is the line:

\long\def\@makefntext##1{\parindent 1em\noindent

As far as I understand, the latex command \noindent removes any indentation applied to the current paragraph, so wouldn’t the \noindent command in this case simply immediately remove the \parindent 1em?

Answer 1

\noindent just acts at that spot suppressing an indentation if at start of a paragraph, and doing nothing elsewhere.

\parindent 1em sets the indentation for all paragraphs in the current scope.

So here a multi-paragraph footnote will have a non-indented first paragraph and subsequent paragraphs indented by 1em.