# Using Unicode characters like \\to and \\ne instead of -\> and !=

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-unicode-characters-like-to-and-ne-instead-of-and/43597>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [July 23, 2020, 11:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-unicode-characters-like-to-and-ne-instead-of-and/43597 "2020-07-23T23:37:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pauljurczak](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/pauljurczak/32/921_2.png) [@pauljurczak](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/pauljurczak)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2020, 11:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-unicode-characters-like-to-and-ne-instead-of-and/43597/1 "2020-07-23T23:37:40Z")

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I just discovered that I can use Unicode characters like `\to` and `\ne` instead of `->` and `!=`. Is anyone using them in their daily coding? In official Julia packages?

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**Author:** ![jling](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jling/32/212909_2.png) [@jling](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jling)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2020, 12:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-unicode-characters-like-to-and-ne-instead-of-and/43597/2 "2020-07-24T00:04:06Z")

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it’s used quite a lot everywhere, even in `Base` you already can do:

```julia
julia> 1 ∈ [1,2,3]
true

julia> Set(1:2) ∪ Set(2:4)
Set{Int64} with 4 elements:
  4
  2
  3
  1

julia> Set(1:2) ∩ Set(2:4)
Set{Int64} with 1 element:
  2

```

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**Author:** ![dpsanders](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dpsanders/32/3573_2.png) [@dpsanders](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dpsanders)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2020, 2:16am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-unicode-characters-like-to-and-ne-instead-of-and/43597/3 "2020-07-24T02:16:51Z")

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And even

```julia
julia> (1:2) ∪ (3:4)
4-element Array{Int64,1}:
 1
 2
 3
 4

```

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**Author:** ![jishnub](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jishnub/32/33620_2.png) [@jishnub](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jishnub)\
**Post date:** [July 24, 2020, 3:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-unicode-characters-like-to-and-ne-instead-of-and/43597/4 "2020-07-24T03:55:09Z")

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I use `\notin` quite a bit, find it to be more compact than `!(a in b)`