Is ≤ a legit less than equals char?

Question

I was reading the release notes of Visual Studio Code and a particular caught my eye.

As you can see, there is a javascript file with the ≤ symbol. I can't figure out how it works, if I try to use it in my code I get a "Invalid or unexpected token" error (which I was expecting), and I can't find if it's only a VSCode configuration that shrinks <= into ≤ for aesthetic purposes.

How does it work?

Answer 1

It looks like a monospaced font with ligatures, which makes <= looking as one sign.

Some sources:

• https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode
• https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig
• https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

Answer 2

This is just due to the font ligature. The actual characters are 2: <= but the ligature renders them as one.

Some fonts support ligatures such as Fira Code and most likely you need to enable ligatures on your IDE if you want to use them.