# [✓] Create new special characters?

GROUPS:
 Greetings! As a part of my research, I am trying to define some new operators in wolfram mathematica. So far I've been able to use the existing special characters to this end. For example, the definition: a_ \[LeftArrow] b_ := "great sucess" Is working just fine, and can be cleared via Clear[LeftArrow] However, I want to define more operators with symbols that are not part of the special characters list. e.g. \[AwesomeSpecialCharacter]=Overscript["\[LeftArrow]","+"] (this obviously doesn't work) Is there a way to create such a new special character so I could later define it as an operator?
10 months ago
5 Replies
 Hans Dolhaine 1 Vote In[1]:= hugo := Overscript["\[LeftArrow]", "+"] In[2]:= hugo Out[2]= \!$$\*OverscriptBox["\<\"\[LeftArrow]\"\>", "\<\"+\"\>"]$$ 
10 months ago
 Neil Singer 1 Vote Also, Look at Format]. See the Documentation [on output formats and Format hereYou can define a function and have it display as your special character or you can define a variable to display as a special character.
 If I understand you correctly, these changes to symbols and formatting do not apply at the input level. For example even after Hans' example I couldn't write: a_\[hugo]b_:="whatever" Because the expression \[hugo] is still meaningless. What I'm saying is that I want to create a new operator that can be used when writing expressions, and not just to format a function to look like use of an operator...