I don't recommend this really!
\left
is actually a TeX
command and has one argument being the delimiter. In this case, the delimiter should be typeset only,so the effect of \left
is to be gobbled. (The same is for \right...
)
As campa noted in his comment: \left...
and \right...
are important commands in amsmath
and changing their definitions will not break for example matrix
etc. resulting in an compilation error but it will break their visual appareance.
I've stored \left...
and \right...
for the pmatrix
environment for example to show how to preserve the usual behaviour there!
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{xpatch}
\let\origleft\left
\let\origright\right
% Save it for the pmatrix environment, for example
\xpatchcmd{\pmatrix}{\left(}{\origleft(}{}{}
\xpatchcmd{\endpmatrix}{\right)}{\origright)}{}{}
\begin{document}
Before
$\left(\left(a+b\right)^2\right)$
$\left[\left(a+b\right)^2\right]$
$\left\{\left(a+b\right)^2\right\}$
$\begin{pmatrix}
a & b \\
c & d \\
\end{pmatrix}$
Now redefining them:
\renewcommand{\left}[1]{%
#1
}
\renewcommand{\right}[1]{%
#1%
}
After:
$\left(\left(a+b\right)^2\right)$
$\left[\left(a+b\right)^2\right]$
$\left\{\left(a+b\right)^2\right\}$
$\begin{pmatrix}
a & b \\
c & d \\
\end{pmatrix}$
\end{document}

\let\saveleft\left \let\saveright\right
\def\left#1{#1} \def\right#1{#1}
, of course a dirty solution :-). Of course you can use\saveleft
and\saveright
if you want original\left
and\right
.\left
and\right
in general: you won't be able to use\big
,\Big
and friends, which you probably do want to use.\big
and the like?\big
and friends to use the original\left
and\right
. Search and replace, it's easier.