I'm trying to typeset a relation. The following should read "< equals {...}", just in the same sense as one would use "x = {...}".
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
$< = \{(x, y), (y, z)\}$
\end{document}
However, the spacing seems to be off: there is too little spacing left of the =
:
Now, I could play around with \,
and its friends to try to get the spacing right, but I guess there has to be some clear way that does not involve explicitly modifying the space. I read something along the lines of $<{} = \{...\}$
somewhere, but that results in the space being too wide.
I guess this has been answered here before, but I couldn't find anything...