[?] Create new special characters?

Questions
, ,
1

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?

2

In[1]:= hugo := Overscript[“[LeftArrow]”, “+”]

In[2]:= hugo

Out[2]= 
\!\(\*OverscriptBox["\<\"\[LeftArrow]\"\>", "\<\"+\"\>"]\)
3

Also, Look at Format[]. See the Documentation on output formats and Format here

You can define a function and have it display as your special character or you can define a variable to display as a special character.

4

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…

5

Lior,

You want the notation package. Use the notation palette to make creating your notation easier.

Regards

Neil

6

Excellent, this is exactly it.

Many thanks, Neil!