# How do I mimic the functionality of “<>”?

The Cell expression for:

<>


is

Cell[BoxData["<>"], "Input"]


However similar expressions are parsed into RowBox(s), for example:

><

Cell[BoxData[RowBox[{">", "<"}]], "Input"]


How do I get expressions like >< to act like <> does?

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My bet is you can't. Operators are predefined and I definately hope someone proves me wrong –  Rojo Aug 23 '12 at 23:26
You could probably put something together with InterpretationBox and MakeBoxes –  rm -rf Aug 23 '12 at 23:37
@R.M I will look into it last time I tried to use InterpretationBox I ran into a dead end. –  Davorak Aug 23 '12 at 23:51

Michael Pilat has stated that you cannot create your own compound operators.

You may find some utility in these posts:

Prefix operator with low precedence

How can one define an infix operator with an arbitrary unicode character?

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Shouldn't it be closed as a duplicate then? –  rm -rf Aug 24 '12 at 2:53
@R.M which one where? –  Mr.Wizard Aug 24 '12 at 7:12

Are you interested only in the case of "less than" and "greater than" symbols? Might other variations serve the purpose?

The following parentheses are represented like "<>" (they are represented without using RowBox), regardless of the order of the characters:

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