Document Classes ⇒ Redefining \[ to \begin{align*}

[alukyane]

Hello world,

This may not be proper style, but I would find it very convenient to

\renewcommand{\[}{\begin{align*}}
\renewcommand{\]}{\end{align*}}

While this works,

\[5\]

produces the error "Paragraph ended before \align* was complete".

Does anyone have any ideas for making this work? I'm using MiKTeX and TeXnicCenter.

Thanks in advance,
-Anton

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Anton,

welcome to the board!
This approach should work:

Code: Select all

\def\[#1\]{\begin{align*}#1\end{align*}}

Stefan

[alukyane]

Thanks Stefan, that works great!
-Anton

[Juanjo]

This may not be proper style,...

Not, of course, even, IMHO, bad style, since you are changing completely the function of one basic LaTeX environment. I figure out that you pretend to always use your new \[...\] environment both for single and for multiline formulas. In such a case, please note that, for single formulas, the align* environment (implicitly used) is not equivalent to the default \[...\]. I conjecture that you will get many formulas with bad vertical space around, if not any other problems.

[ampinto]

I agree, it's bad style.

On the other hand, the previous solution gave me an idea:

Code: Select all

\def\bal#1\eal{\begin{align*}#1\end{align*}}

This works like a charm, and finally allows me to write \bal \eal instead of \begin{align} \end{align}.