# Nice looking empty set?

I feel like the standard $\emptyset$ is ugly. By hand, my empty set symbol is a lot rounder, then this "slashed-zero"-type symbol.

Two questions:

• Do people really use it (I mean people who have any sort of sense of aesthetics)?
• What alternatives do you suggest?

I seem to recall something closer to what I'm looking for - a slash round-o - but the diameter of the circle seemed too small, I think. (And am I asking this in the right place?)

• I use \emptyset and don't like \varnothing, which is more a symbol for plumbers than mathematicians. :) Michael's advice is pretious: \renewcommand{\emptyset}{...} or \let\emptyset\???, so that you can easily change your mind. – egreg Jul 11 '11 at 20:04
• Regarding first question. Go to LaTeX Search and search for \emptyset. You'll get ~1000 docs using it (it is possibly a search limit), so I dare to say it is used. – przemoc Jul 11 '11 at 20:08
• egreg: tomayto, tomawto ;-) – Jérémie Jul 11 '11 at 22:38
• przemoc: you don't account for poor taste (said jokingly - mostly!). – Jérémie Jul 11 '11 at 22:39
• @Jérémie: If you want to reach particular commentator, i.e. be sure it will be notified about it, you have to precede username (at least using 3 first unambiguous characters) with @. Read details regarding it. BTW here I didn't have to address you directly, as you're the OP, so you would be notified anyway. – przemoc Jul 12 '11 at 8:14

Try \varnothing from the amssymb package. It is perfectly round, and the comprehensive LaTeX symbol list states that it is preferred by many to \emptyset.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}

\let\oldemptyset\emptyset
\let\emptyset\varnothing

\begin{document}
$\oldemptyset$ $\emptyset$
\end{document}


• Thank you very much, it's exactly the answer that I was looking for. – Jérémie Jul 11 '11 at 22:39
• Can we all agree that \phi and \Phi should never be used for this? Argh! ;-) – Colin Fraizer Jul 30 '11 at 8:54
• @ColinFraizer I can't believe it. Do people seriously use Phi for empty set? Shocking! – Alfredo Hernández May 16 '13 at 15:22
• Just wait until someone sees \phi and doesn't understand it's meant to be "empty set", and uses \varphi in his own documents. My engineering textbook was a nightmare. – Lazar Ljubenović Dec 1 '13 at 11:22
• @AlfredoHernández Unfortunately, yes. In the wild… (video should start at 4:03; offending statement at 4:17). – wchargin Nov 11 '14 at 18:44

I always just use "\O" in math mode:

$\O$


• @ArunDebray, this must be what you're referring to: LaTeX Warning: Command \O invalid in math mode on input line 1006. I have so many warnings in my thesis document I don't even notice unless the output halts. Output does look fine though. – freb Mar 20 '16 at 21:41
• @freb Ignoring LaTeX warnings is a way to disaster... – yo' Jan 25 '17 at 18:28
• Note that Ø (aka \O) is the true origin of the symbol (see this answer ). To avoid the warnings, you can use the amsmath package and \text{\O} (or \text{Ø} if you use latin1 or utf8 encoding, plus a keyboard giving access to this letter). If you tired to type \text everywhere, \newcommand is your friend – Frédéric Grosshans Jul 17 '17 at 14:59
• IMHO, still the sexiest empty set on this page. – freb Jan 27 '18 at 7:07
• @yo' meh, I'm sure it depends on your use case. I wrote a 50+ page thesis with a million compiler errors but the resulting pdf was exactly what I wanted. So do I spend a few hours just to get clean compiler output? Do we serve the compiler or does it serve us? – eficker Apr 21 at 15:43

I find that { } (\{\} in LateX) is perfectly clear to mathematicians, maybe not to computer scientists. I would use the following:

This is obtained with

\usepackage{algorithm}
\usepackage{algpseudocode}
\begin{document}
\begin{algorithm}[H]
\begin{algorithmic}[1]
\State $myset \gets \{\}$
\For{$i = 0\, \textbf{to}\, 4$}
\State {$myset\gets myset\, ||\, (4 - i)$}\Comment{append $i$-th reversed index}
\EndFor
\end{algorithmic}
\end{document}


Using \emptyset would give

This is obtained with

\begin{algorithm}[H]
\begin{algorithmic}[2]
\State $myset \gets \emptyset$
\For{$i = 0\, \textbf{to}\, 4$}
\State {$myset\gets myset\, ||\, (4 - i)$}\Comment{append $i$-th reversed index}
\EndFor
\end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}

• Why would computer scientists shun from {}. Most are fluent in some programming language(s), and that's the most common syntax for an empty collection. I always figured it would be the other way around. – Neowizard Jan 6 '17 at 8:50

The \diameter is an alternative for emptyset in lines, it is a bit tiny.

\usepackage{wasysym}
\emptyset\diameter


• diameter is another symbol, which is intended for ... diameters in mechanical engineering, plumbing, etc. – Frédéric Grosshans Jul 17 '17 at 10:54