Math & Science ⇒ Is there any way to define -> as rightarrow?

[Incantator]

Hello, I'm recently learning LaTeX. What I want is, when I write \-> in math mod, it will turn into \rightarrow. I first tried this:

Code: Select all

\newcommand{\->}{\rightarrow}

I didn't expect it to work anyway; it seems like -> cannot be recognized as a group for a new command. And I'm also not sure if this will work INSIDE math mod.

[Johannes_B]

LaTeX knows letters, and other stuff. Commands like \section or \tableofcontents consist of the escape character, which is a backslash by default, and a series of letters. For the sake of remembering (mnemonity, this word should exist) those are english words.

On the other hand, we have commands that take one non letter. For example \& or \,.

You could do some magic stuff, make the - active and use -> to get the symbol, but please, please don't.

You want to save typing, you are lazy. I am lazy too. Well, some would call it efficient. The day will come that you are giving your file away. The person reviewing your code will be most confused.
The best way is to get a text editor, that helps you to save time. A good editor can map your -> input and directly convert it, but ... There is a pretty high chance, that you will want -> (exactly those two charackter) sooner or later. For example in TikZ pictures. TikZ is a nice thing, please have a look at some examples.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Yes, such shortcuts can break other things and it doesn't improve readability. For example, lengthy TikZ code is nice to read but condensed xypic drawing code is extremely hard to understand.

The next logical requirement would be supporting <- too. Which means, making - an active character (command) would not suffice. I would stick with classic commands. Though you could define shortcuts \ra and \la. But it's hardly memorable over time, especially if you would do it with many things.

You could use editor keyboard shortcuts, or auto-completion. Or a preprocessor such as with arara, which does the replacement automatically before the LaTeX run. If you just started with LaTeX, there are many other useful things to learn than such advanced things. Even I don't use arara or preprocessing yet, after about 20 years of using LaTeX, though I'm open for new things.

Stefan

[Incantator]

Thanks for your explanations!