Replace symbol

[Roedy Green]

Is there a Unicode glyph that symbolises "replace".

You would use it in something like this:

c:\Users\?userid?\

to make it clear userid is not to be taken literally, but to be
replaced with a specific value.

There is <var>in HTML which just renders as italic, but I would like
something stronger, that could not be confused with a literal string.

 

[Roedy Green]

c:\Users\?userid?\

after playing around, for now I have settled on <- and ->. You can see
what I mean at http://mindprod.com/jgloss/thunderbird.html

 

[Roedy Green]

That's close to BNF, which uses < and >

e.g.

<simpleExpr> ::= <term> | <sign><term> | <simpleExpr> <addOp> <term>

BugBear

I used arrows because they suggest "something else goes in from here
to here". The problem all the time with such notations is the naive
user thinks the symbol is something to key literally. The problem for
the experienced user is there are so many different notations, and you
can presume conventions from another apply here. I wanted to find
something the user could not key literally. I also used grey to
indicate this part of the name is something different, not really
there.