Unicode multiplication × and minus − signs could be recognized by Julia as the are by Google

Internals & Design
1

If there is no speed penalty or any other kind of penalty, it would be nice that Unicode characters × (00D7) and − (2212) be recognized by Julia as multiplication and minus operators as they are by Google.
Sometimes I copy a formula written in a word processor to a piece of code or an arithmetic computation to Google. In the case of a code I have to replace the multiplication sign by an asterix.
Finally, using the multiplication operator makes the code nicer.

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2

x × y is already in use for cross(x,y) and x − y is the same as the standard x - y starting from v1.7 !

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3

The × is already exported by the LinearAlgebra stdlib and it means cross product as it does in most mathematical texts:

julia> using LinearAlgebra

julia> [1, 2, 3] × [3, 2, 1]
3-element Vector{Int64}:
 -4
  8
 -4

The unicode minus is already an alias for - in the upcoming Julia release.

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4

Thanks for the replies!
The dot operator is not recognized. Is there a reason for that?

5

It’s exported by the LinearAlgebra stdlib like the × operator.

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6

Using LinearAlgebra, a dot operator is equivalent to an Asterix. Why not without the LinearAlgebra standard library?

7

They are not the same

julia> using LinearAlgebra

julia> x = rand(5); y = rand(5);

julia> x ⋅ y
0.9319630238212403

julia> x * y
ERROR: MethodError: no method matching *(::Vector{Float64}, ::Vector{Float64})
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