UTF-8 Unicode operators vs digraphs

[Timon Gehr]

On 8/12/26 21:37, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 8/11/2026 10:34 AM, Dlighted wrote:
>> Until C23:
>> ??=    #
>> ??/    \\
>> ??'    ^
>> ??(    [
>> ??)    ]
>> ??!    |
>> ??<    {
>> ??>    }
>> ??-    ~
>> Since C 95:
>> <:    [
>> :>    ]
>> <%    {
>> %>    }
>> %:    #
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digraphs_and_trigraphs_(programming)
> 
> In my 40-some (cough cough) years of programming, I have never ever seen 
> those trigraphs and digraphs appear anywhere other than a test suite. 
> They were a complete failure.
> ...

I think they were worth it just for helping facilitate this wholesome 
interaction:
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-really-programmers-with-computer-science-degrees-who-cannot-pass-the-FizzBuzz-test/answer/Gayle-Laakmann-McDowell?comment_id=9146415&comment_type=2

Anyway, OPs point is that e.g. `<=` is arguably just a digraph for `≤`. 
Except that `≤` is not even legal, and then they argue that that is the 
problem, because it requires people to keep using the digraph.

> I agree that UTF-16 and UCS-32 are essentially dead. I know that Windows 
> runs on UTF-16, but I still recommend using UTF-8 and then convert only 
> when reading to/from a Windows API.
> 
> D was designed to be agnostic about UTF-8/16/32, as that was the sign of 
> those times. But I asked Adam Wilson to abandon UTF-16/32 for the new 
> Phobos, other than the adapter ranges.
> 
> As for ≥ ≤ ≠, they certainly look nice. But I don't really want to look 
> at a cheat card to remember how to type them in.
> 

For me it is literally just

\>= (or \le)

\<= (or \ge)

\neq (I am used to this anyway, but could be reconfigured to allow \!= 
as well easily).


I think the bigger issue with `≠` that it's clearly the negation of `=` 
and not `==`. Arguably `==` is the "digraph" for the "Unicode variant" 
`=`, but `=` is already parsed as assignment.

Therefore code would likely have to mix `≠` and `==`, or there would 
need to be a way to overload `=` to mean equality comparison sometimes 
and assignment other times. I think this would be somewhat annoying to 
try and pull off in D.