Is there a short diagonal pointing arrow symbol?

Question

I understand that the package stmaryrd has a shorter version of the \rightarrow, \shortrightarrow, I wonder if there's a short version of the diagonal arrows (e.g. \searrow) and if not, if there's an easy way to draw my own?

Answer 1

You can rotate the short right arrow; however, due to a quirk in the font, rotation needs to artificially increase the height of the symbol. The picture shows its bounding box; the black blob shows that the arrow stem is on the math axis, so to get symmetric placement one needs to double the height.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,stmaryrd,graphicx}

\makeatletter
\newcommand{\fixed@sra}{$\vrule height 2\fontdimen22\textfont2 width 0pt\shortrightarrow$}
\newcommand{\shortarrow}[1]{%
  \mathrel{\text{\rotatebox[origin=c]{\numexpr#1*45}{\fixed@sra}}}
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}

$a\shortrightarrow a$ % the base symbol

% the following is just to show the bounding box
{\vrule width 4pt height \fontdimen22\textfont2 \fboxsep=0pt\fbox{$\shortrightarrow$}}

% The usage example
$
a\shortarrow{0}
a\shortarrow{1}
a\shortarrow{2}
a\shortarrow{3}
a\shortarrow{4}
a\shortarrow{5}
a\shortarrow{6}
a\shortarrow{7}
a
$
\end{document}

Answer 2

Using tikz _{(fingers crossed)}

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\newcommand{\myarrow}[1][-45]{%
  \mathrel{%
    \text{$
     \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline = -0.5ex]
       \node[inner sep=0pt,outer sep=0pt,rotate = #1] (a) at (0,0)  {$\xrightarrow{}$};
    \end{tikzpicture}
    $}%
  }%
}%

\begin{document}
\[
A \myarrow T_{A \myarrow T_{A \myarrow T}} 
\]
\[
A \myarrow[45] T_{A \myarrow[45] T_{A \myarrow[45] T}}
\]
\[
A \myarrow[135] T_{A \myarrow[135] T_{A \myarrow[135] T}}
\]
\[
A \myarrow[-135] T_{A \myarrow[-135] T_{A \myarrow[-135] T}}
\]

\end{document}

I am not sure about the vertical placement. For this [baseline = -0.5ex] may be adjusted.