[latexrefman-discuss] \protect, Mysterious error about missing closing round bracket

[Karl Berry]

    but the simple silly home-made command which I
    was proposing also is fragile

Yes, I understand.

    I acknowledge that \MyFragileCmd above may be a bit out-of-scope

Right.  We don't want to get into \ifx.

    when \newcommand* is used to define a command with an optional
    argument, then it automatically robustify the command.

Interesting.  

    Probably we should also some day speak about robustification and
    indicate that \newcommand behaves this way.

Yes.

    Is that something TeXLive does too ?

Well, I didn't try it, but I'd be shocked if it was MiKTeX-specific.
Surely this is done in the LaTeX code.  Basically all that TL and MiKTeX
do is redistribute it, not change it.  -k