How to write special characters in Julia code

Julia allows you to use various Unicode symbols for variable and function names, and it makes sense in a lot of the scientific domains Julia is used in, making the code be more alike the scientific notation. (It's sometimes called "executable math" for this reason, though at this point it's more like "executable scientific notation".)

However, in any new code you write, it's not generally necessary to use these symbols, and you can write the code with the basic ASCII characters. Julia language and its standard libraries always provide ASCII equivalents for the Unicode functions they use.

For eg., ⊻ is the XOR character, and you can write 2 ⊻ 11 to get the XOR of the two numbers. But you can also instead write xor(2, 11) to get the same result, and they're exactly equivalent to the language. It's considered good practice for external packages as well, to provide their interface in terms of ASCII-typable names to the extent possible, even if internally Unicode-only names are used.

With that said, if you find you do need to work with code that uses such Unicode symbols, there are a few options:

Option 1: Autohotkey-script for converting LaTeX-like input to unicode characters.

Usually, the way to enter these character in Julia is using LaTeX-like syntax, for eg. \epsilon for ϵ. The AutoHotKey script provided here gives somewhat similar functionality, allowing you to type LaTeX-like input and converting it automatically into the corresponding symbols.

Option 2: A copy-paste list of symbols

This is pretty ad-hoc, but can work for situations where you just need to edit some existing code. You can use a clipboard manager like ClipX, or Win10's inbuilt one, to keep a copy of all the symbols the script uses. At any point, you can choose and insert the particular symbol you need.

Option 2a: Copy-paste from the REPL/Jupyter/Pluto

I'll put this option too here since it uses the clipboard as well. This makes use of the usual workflow for writing Julia code - you'll probably want to try out the code in the REPL or in a notebook anyway, so you can use the tab-completion features there, and then copy that code into your editor. Julia has a clipboard function too, so after trying out median(sin.(-ℯ:0.01:π)) in the REPL, you can surround that in triple quotes and pass it to clipboard like this: """median(sin.(-ℯ:0.01:π))""" |> clipbaord from the REPL itself.

Option 3: Use JuliaEditorSupport/julia-NotepadPlusPlus

This is sort of the "official" option, but only the syntax highlighting file has been updated recently, and the quality and reliability of the Autohotkey script here isn't clear. I'd be hesitant to recommend this option.

Option 4: Use a better supported editor

It's hard to let go of familiar tools, but in this case, this is probably the most reliable option long term. Julia for VSCode is probably the best supported editor right now, but the plugins for Vim and Emacs are also pretty good. If VS Code is too heavy (and Vim and Emacs unfamiliar), you can also try the plugin for Sublime Text which should be both easy to use and light.