[boogies]

IMO it should be like Fennel and just support `lambda` and `λ`. The latter is not even that hard to type, in virtually any free (libre) OS you can just

    $ echo '
    <Multi_key> <Y> <Y> : "Λ" # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA
    <Multi_key> <y> <y> : "λ" # GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMDA
    ' >> ~/.XCompose

If you’re limited by a nonfree OS you should be able to patch the problem with free duct tape like Karabiner or AutoHotKey.

And in vim you can just

    <C-K>*l

in insert mode (which can be done with option-l on macOS if you `inoremap ¬ <C-K>*l` https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/230422/type-lambda...).

[LoathsLights]

Now imagine doing that same thing for every system you're programming on. And then imagine having to do it for a million different symbols. I'm sure as hell glad you're not in charge of any of this.

[boogies]

> Now imagine doing that same thing for every system you're programming on.

As a matter of fact, I already do, the XCompose way.

  yadm clone /path/to/dotfiles/repo.git¹

As for the vim way, why would I use a system without vim²?

> And then imagine having to do it for a million different symbols.

I don’t know other symbols as useful as this, but sure, either of my solutions scales fine (`yadm clone` shouldn’t get bogged down by any repo smaller than the Linux kernel’s). My system's /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose already has a section for APL’s symbols out of the box.

¹yadm is dumb by the way, any symlink manager + git/hg is probably better

²As it so happens, I do: because vim is bloat and https://sr.ht/~martanne/vis/ fits much better in the ramdisk my OS always runs in — but I’d bet 99.99% ±0.009% of programmers install their OS on an HDD/SSD and don’t care.

[thotsBgone]

A better solution is just to use the word 'lambda', and let your text editor render it as a lambda symbol if you want (my emacs does this).

[BigJono]

No, that's a shithouse solution.

Everyone that doesn't have a fancy IDE now has 6-8 extra useless characters for something that should be syntax.

[thotsBgone]

How is it different than the word "function"?

[BigJono]

It's not, that's why people use arrow syntax in languages like Javascript for short in-lined functions.

[michaelhoffman]

In Windows, WinCompose lets you set up compose keys like that, although the default ⋄yy goes to ʎ.

[dash2]

I don’t think R yet has native Unicode support on every platform.