UTF-8 Unicode operators vs digraphs

[Timon Gehr]

On 8/11/26 19:34, Dlighted wrote:
> The site told me I should make a new thread rather than replying to a 
> years old one. Forgive me if I made a completely useless offtopic thread 
> that wasted everyone's time.
> I thought about Unicode operators multiple times over the years and it's 
> been mentioned on the D forum more than once:
> https://forum.dlang.org/thread/nujfnoneihykkkfzeeaj@forum.dlang.org
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/ahxrzlvznpdutwvvmlfv@forum.dlang.org
> ...
> 
> Personally I can in fact type some math symbols on my keyboard layout 
> natively on higher layers without using compose. ¬ ∨ ∧
> And every Linux user (like me) can use xcompose by pressing the compose 
> key or shortcut. My xcompose also has some already predefined. >= <= /= 
> turn into ≥ ≤ ≠.
> There are also third party keyboard layouts and IMEs for Windows. I have 
> used one and it worked fine.
> Maybe code formatters could convert to them too.
> ...

I am just using an emacs input mode. Plugins also exist for other editors.

My own language has Unicode operator support (though it's fully a 
formatting choice, everything has an ASCII alternative). It has been an 
uphill battle. E.g., see:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/i4uavw/meet_silq_the_first_intuitive_highlevel_language/
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ii4t0r/meet_silq_the_first_intuitive_highlevel_language/

Instead of discussing what is interesting about the language, a good 
chunk of the comments are just low-effort anti-Unicode-syntax posts. 
It's not considered sufficiently "normal" and people like writing snarky 
comments, so you always get a lot of spam whenever you are trying to 
share something.

One reddit user put it best:
"I feel dump. Can't understand what's going one how the syntaxt work."

Also, one drawback of the Unicode syntax design has been that e.g. 
OpenAI ignores 𝔹 when reading HTML pages, so GPT is actually not able 
to read documentation if it is written with Unicode. It is very adamant 
though that the syntax is `x := 0:;` and `x := vector(n, 0):^n` instead 
of `x := 0:𝔹;` and `x := vector(n, 0):𝔹^n`. Arguably this part would 
probably not happen with symbols D is likely to use.

> ...
> Personally I find && quite ugly too. ∧ ∨ for && || are more readable. I 
> know Walter doesn't like the keywords _and or not_ because they've been 
> used as variable names.

I think `∧` and `∨` I think are not great choices for `&&` and `||`, 
because `&&` and `||` are short-circuiting operators. Then `and` and 
`or` don't match either, for the same reason (though I guess Python does 
this anyway). One alternative I have seen that actually makes sense is 
`and then` and `or else`, but it's a bit verbose.

> I read it somewhere on the forum. But I guess 
> that would be too controversial for people who don't know math well. I 
> actually like the words but I use a Germanic language, so I'm naturally 
> biased whereas math is universal.
> ...

Short-circuiting is not universal.

> However the symbols ≥ ≤ ≠ would be an undeniable upgrade. So, uh ... 
> **Why not?**
> ...

In my experience: Humanity is not ready for it, it will blow people's 
minds and break people's pet software, even if it was written in 2026.

Not a reason not to do it, just a reason why I predict it will not 
happen anytime soon in D.