What ⍶ means
It's alpha's underlined twin, a separate APL symbol. APL is a programming language written with special symbols instead of keywords. In it, (alpha) stands for the left argument of a function and (omega) for the right one.
Early APL terminals could underline letters, and APL used underlined letters as a second set for naming things. Unicode 1.1 encoded ⍶ together with its partner (omega underbar) so that APL character sets could be stored as standard text. Some modern dialects give the pair a job: ⍶ as shorthand for an operator's left operand (written elsewhere) and for the right. Check your dialect's documentation before relying on it.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
3
Questions people ask
1Can I use ⍶ instead of the Greek letter α?
No. It is an APL symbol with its own code point, so search, spellcheck and Greek text won't treat it as alpha. Type α for Greek or maths.
More like this
10
How to type or find ⍶
- Also called
- alpha underbar · underlined alpha · APL alpha underscore
- Search it as
- APL alpha · ⍶ · U+2376 · alpha with line below
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⍶\2376Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.