I want to set up a part of my Mathematica package so that typing <-Space is replaced with the left arrow character (← or \[LeftArrow]) just like it does with ->Space. Does anyone know how to do this? I looked briefly at event handling but didn't see anything immediately useful. I already know, of course, that Esc<-Esc will insert ←, and that doing so is not that much additional effort, but I'm more interested in the concept involved here. Any ideas?
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asked May 4, 2012 at 16:32
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$\begingroup$ Also see my answer here for how to set input aliases and input auto-replacements $\endgroup$– rm -rf ♦Commented May 4, 2012 at 17:10
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1 Answer
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Normally you could use:
SetOptions[$FrontEndSession,
InputAutoReplacements -> {"<-" -> "\[LeftArrow]"}
]
But this fails because Mathematica already parses <- differently. Specifically the documentation states:
In expression input, automatic replacements can be performed only on strings of characters that correspond to complete input tokens.
You can see that this setting works for other strings, e.g.:
SetOptions[$FrontEndSession,
InputAutoReplacements -> {"stuff" -> "\[LeftArrow]"}
]
Then typing (with a space):
x stuff
Will render:
x \[LeftArrow]
answered May 4, 2012 at 17:08