# Why do unicode arrows behave unexpectedly for variable names?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-do-unicode-arrows-behave-unexpectedly-for-variable-names/57103>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [March 14, 2021, 1:14am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-do-unicode-arrows-behave-unexpectedly-for-variable-names/57103 "2021-03-14T01:14:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rwclutterbuck](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rwclutterbuck/32/22894_2.png) [@rwclutterbuck](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rwclutterbuck)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2021, 1:14am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-do-unicode-arrows-behave-unexpectedly-for-variable-names/57103/1 "2021-03-14T01:14:05Z")

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I’m going to keep this short as from what I’ve read on the topic the answer is likely “there’s ambiguity so it is turned off”.

I was running in to the problem when doing some programming exercises and noticed that when using one of the diagonal arrows (e.g. \searrow) to indicate a diagonal slice through the data the compiler threw an “invalid character “x” near column 1” .

By this point I had had success with arrows (e.g. \downarrow and \rightarrow) and decided to use a two non-diagonal arrows to indicate the diagonal instead. This now threw a “x” is not a binary operator error".

Is there a reason behind these decisions that I am just unaware of, as being able to define the direction in the variable name seems like the perfect use case for unicode characters.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2021, 9:10am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-do-unicode-arrows-behave-unexpectedly-for-variable-names/57103/2 "2021-03-14T09:10:39Z")

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This may be just an inconsistency that could be fixed. It is worth checking for existing issues and opening a new one if applicable.