🚀 go-pugleaf

I am having trouble getting the `correct' value of a counter typed out on the
screen using \typeout and \Roman.

I have a counter called chapter, and defined \thechapter as follows
        \newcounter{chapter}
        \def\thechapter{\Roman{chapter}

so that when the chapter is 3, I would get III as the value of the chapter.

While processing, I want to typeout the current chapter number, so at
the relevant place, I issue the command \typeout{\thechapter}


If \thechapter is defined as               I get as output

        \arabic{chapter}                        3
        \roman{chapter}                         iii
        \Roman{chapter}                         \uppercase {iii}
        \alph{chapter}                          c
        \Alph{chapter}                          C


QUESTION 1::

Is this a bug in LaTeX? \Roman is not expanded but everything else
gets displayed properly? In latex.tex, \@Roman is defined as
        \expandafter\uppercase\expandafter{\romannumeral #1}
which is why the full expansion is not being done.


QUESTION 2::

How do I force the expansion without changing the definition of
\@Roman? Can I say something like
        \typeout{\expand\thechapter}
so that \thechapter is correctly expanded? I did go thorugh part of
the TeX book (\expandafter, \noexpand, etc.) but couldn't figure out
the solution. (There is no \expand in TeX.)


Thanks for any pointers,
Manas
-- 
 _____________________________________________________________________________
:     Manas Mandal             Department of Computer and Information Science :
:                                        The Ohio State University            :
: mandal@cis.ohio-state.edu     2036 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210-1277 USA :