[OS X TeX] Latex symbol for "define equal"

Herbert Schulz herbs at wideopenwest.com
Sun Aug 19 18:52:29 EDT 2018

> On Aug 19, 2018, at 5:43 PM, David Derbes <loki at uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
> I and several colleagues just finished editing a 1200 page manuscript, LaTeX’d lectures of the great Sidney Coleman on quantum field theory. One of the colleagues was the well-known physicist author David Griffiths, who earned his doctorate under Coleman. He championed \equiv for “defined as”, and I think that is pretty standard in physics. It appears perhaps two dozen times in the Coleman lectures.
>
> I’m an old Pascal programmer (there are probably not that many young Pascal programmers :-) ) and while I love :=, I don’t see it catching on as “defined as”, notwithstanding the impeccable logic of JMaF. I have never seen it used that way in physics (but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been).
>
> David Derbes
> U of Chicago Lab Schools

Howdy,

I've always assumed Pascal's use of := rather than = as assigned to'' is because

x = x + 1

used to increment a memory location assigned the name x makes no sense as a mathematical equation but

x := x + 1

makes sense.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)