Is it intentional that \MakeLinkTarget without hyperref does not set \@currentHref using the current counter?

[mbertucci47]

This stems from a discussion in latex3/tagging-project#796.

It was my understanding that \stepcounter{<counter>}\MakeLinkTarget{<counter>} should be equivalent to \refstepcounter{<counter>}. When hyperref is loaded, this is true insofar as \@currentHref is the same. But when hyperref is not loaded, \MakeLinkTarget always sets \@currentHref to target*.<current counter>. Here are two examples showing the difference.

\documentclass{article}
\newcounter{mycount}
\makeatletter
\begin{document}
\refstepcounter{mycount}
\@currentHref
\end{document}

This prints mycount.1.

\documentclass{article}
\newcounter{mycount}
\makeatletter
\begin{document}
\stepcounter{mycount}
\MakeLinkTarget{mycount}
\@currentHref
\end{document}

This prints target*.1.

Why the different behavior? It probably doesn't matter much since I don't think anything except hyperref uses \@currentHref, but it seems to me like an unnecessary inconsistency.