\^
and \~
apply accents in text mode, but each gives an error when used in math mode. So I consider redefining them for my own use, perhaps like this:
\let\old@hat\^
\def\^{\ifmmode\mbox{\textasciicircum}\else\old@hat\fi}
(Or we could replace \mbox
with \text
if we've loaded amsmath.)
Besides the slight hit to efficiency, and perhaps confusing some others who read the source of my documents, are there any other downsides to this that I'm not recognizing?
\hat
and\tilde
? Keep the short commands for text and the long ones for math.^
and~
to get the raw characters (with bigger, lower shapes than one gets by doing\hat{}
or\tilde{}
).\wedge
and\sim
?$\hat{}$
but smaller than$\wedge$
. It's not so important. For this question, I was interested in what the downsides might be to giving\^
a definition in math mode, regardless of what one defines it to expand to.