# Changing ( and ) to \left( and \right)

Are there any plans to have the LaTeX automatically read all ( and ) to automatically become \left( and \right)?
If so, then when can we expect the update?

• Several discussions on why this isn't as easy as you'd expect, including this one. – Mike Renfro Feb 22 '15 at 4:19
• I hope there aren't; at least not with the current behaviour of \left and \right. – Gonzalo Medina Feb 22 '15 at 4:22
• Why would you want this behavior? – Mico Feb 22 '15 at 5:39
• There is no such plans, since you'd have even more people wanting this behaviour removed. There already exists a package or some solutions that encourage this behaviour. See Macro for \left( and \right). If this solves your problem, then this is a duplicate. Give some feedback. – Werner Feb 22 '15 at 6:30
• For a posting that discusses some of the downsides of (over)using \left and \right, see Is it ever bad to use \left and \right? – Mico Feb 23 '15 at 3:18

No. There are no plans to change the behaviour. As seen in many answers on this site many people over-use \left \right, when a simple ( or a fixed size such as \bigl( would be preferable.
\left\right don't always choose the optimal size, they almost always introduce some extra horizontal space, and they have to be matched within the same TeX group which causes problems if you want to split the term over a multi-line expression.
• @ColeJohnson Not sure that I understand the comment, LaTeX's current version is 2e, but in any case the behaviour of \left\right is really a TeX feature and not anything LaTeX can do much about. – David Carlisle Feb 22 '15 at 18:24