What's the difference between C-u C-u C-u <Command> and C-u 64 <Command>?

Question

In org-mode, C-u C-u C-u Tab expands all trees. When I wanted to check what it's bound to, I wasn't able to do that using C-h k as it quickly told me what C-u is bound to. From experiments, I know that pressing C-u n times sets the prefix argument to 4^n. So why doesn't C-u 6 4 Tab do the same thing as C-u C-u C-u Tab?

Answer 1

There is a subtle distinction between C-u C-u C-u Tab and C-u 64 Tab. When you use only the C-u key, without using digits (i.e., 64), what actually gets passed to the org-cycle function (which is what Tab calls here) is a list: (64). If you use C-u 64 Tab, the argument passed to org-cycle is the integer 64.

It's up to the author of a function to decide how they handle this difference. In the case of org-mode, at least in the case of org-cycle, the underlying code assumes that users will only use C-u. It does this in a cond statement, where the tests take the form (equal arg '(64)). This will only be true when you use pass a list, not when you pass an integer.

You can find a full explanation in the Elisp manual: (elisp) Prefix Command Arguments, and also (elisp) Interactive Codes.