Unicode aliases for ASCII operators

# Andy Earnshaw (12 years ago)

I was thinking about this subject a while ago and found an interesting thread on the Scala debate mailing list. I was going to raise this question back then, but I forgot about it until now. If I understand correctly, several Unicode symbols are aliases for ASCII operators, for example:

=>  ⇒   // implemented
<-  ←   // implemented
->  →   // implemented

At the time I saw this, I thought it was pretty interesting. The thread goes on to suggest more could be implemented:

>=  ≥
<=  ≤

*   ×   multiplication  // this one's probably an ASCII approximation
/   ÷   division
!   ¬   logical negation
^   ⊕   exclusive or
!=  ≠   not equal

Perhaps we could think about this for ECMAScript, along with the rest(e.g. ≈ for == and ≡ for ===). Would there be any harm in it if we kept the ASCII equivalents intact? By putting them in we may be looking toward the future where this kind of thing is (hopefully) more common in programming languages (and on keyboards).

I was thinking about this subject a while ago and found an interesting
thread [1] on the Scala debate mailing list.  I was going to raise this
question back then, but I forgot about it until now.  If I understand
correctly, several Unicode symbols are aliases for ASCII operators, for
example:

=>  ⇒   // implemented
<-  ←   // implemented
->  →   // implemented


At the time I saw this, I thought it was pretty interesting.  The thread
goes on to suggest more could be implemented:

>=  ≥
<=  ≤

*   ×   multiplication  // this one's probably an ASCII approximation
/   ÷   division
!   ¬   logical negation
^   ⊕   exclusive or
!=  ≠   not equal

Perhaps we could think about this for ECMAScript, along with the rest(e.g.
≈ for == and ≡ for ===).  Would there be any harm in it if we kept the
ASCII equivalents intact?  By putting them in we may be looking toward the
future where this kind of thing is (hopefully) more common in programming
languages (and on keyboards).

Andy

 [1] http://www.scala-lang.org/node/4723
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# Norbert Lindenberg (12 years ago)

Earlier discussion: Digraphs and Unicode pretty-glyphs, for arrows, triangle, etc.

On Jul 18, 2013, at 10:48 , Andy Earnshaw <andyearnshaw at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was thinking about this subject a while ago and found an interesting thread [1] on the Scala debate mailing list.  I was going to raise this question back then, but I forgot about it until now.  If I understand correctly, several Unicode symbols are aliases for ASCII operators, for example:
> 
> =>  ⇒   // implemented
> <-  ←   // implemented
> ->  →   // implemented
> 
> 
> At the time I saw this, I thought it was pretty interesting.  The thread goes on to suggest more could be implemented:
> >=  ≥
> <=  ≤
> 
> *   ×   multiplication  // this one's probably an ASCII approximation
> /   ÷   division
> !   ¬   logical negation
> ^   ⊕   exclusive or
> !=  ≠   not equal
> 
> Perhaps we could think about this for ECMAScript, along with the rest(e.g. ≈ for == and ≡ for ===).  Would there be any harm in it if we kept the ASCII equivalents intact?  By putting them in we may be looking toward the future where this kind of thing is (hopefully) more common in programming languages (and on keyboards).
> 
> Andy
> 
>  [1] http://www.scala-lang.org/node/4723

Earlier discussion:
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2012-April/thread.html#22077

Norbert