Leftwards Arrow
Part of Arrows
On Windows, hold Alt and type 27 on the numeric keypad to insert leftwards arrow.
- Alt code
- Alt+27
- HTML entity
- ←
- Unicode
- U+2190
About this symbol
The very first version of ASCII, in 1963, had a left arrow in the position where the underscore _ sits today. Programming languages that grew up in that era used it to mean “store this value here”: in APL and Smalltalk, x ← 5 puts 5 into x, and pseudocode in textbooks still writes it that way.
Unicode facts
- Official name
- LEFTWARDS ARROW
- Type
- Maths symbol
- Unicode block
- Arrows
- Unicode group
- Simple arrows
- Added in
- Unicode 1.1 (1993)
- Related
- ◌⃪ Combining Leftwards Arrow Overlay U+20EA
Click the symbol or any value at the top of the page to copy it. See the full Arrows chart for related characters.