# Left aligning equations without align character

I realise that this has been asked many times before, but no answers I've found seem to provide a solution to my question.

I'd like to left align all text in an align block, in:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\begin{align}
b := (a \oplus s_1) \oplus s_2 \\
e := 0 \\
\end{align}

\end{document}


This presents me with:

If I change the first line to \documentclass[fleqn]{article} , then instead I get:

What I'm really looking for is the ability to align the first character on every line in the align block, to the far left i.e. so that b and a are vertically aligned. I would much rather not have to use a character such as & to guide the alignment, I'd prefer to always be the first character of each word after a \\.

• i don't think you want the \\  after the last line; that gives you an empty (but numbered) extra line in the output. – barbara beeton Apr 1 '14 at 14:50

Don't use align. Use gather instead.
\documentclass[fleqn]{article}