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There is lots of symbols and may be operators like || in this expression

$$ 3^k||n$$

that I would like to be able to quickly find the meaning of. I tried Wolfram|Alpha but I think it expects the name of the symbol instead of the symbol itself, so it doesn't give me the correct answer.

Some resources you could recommend?

Thanks!

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    The source wheer you find that expression should introduce notation that is not to usual (and sometimes invented by the author). Of gourse $a||b$ may mean that two lines are parallel in geometry, whereas in number theory it has - no meaning. Instead this is really a ternary relation: $a^b||c$ means that $c$ is a multiple of $a^b$ but not of $a^{b+1}$. This doesn't help you in decrypting general symbolism, though.2012-09-29
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    @Hagen - I guess Adrián saw it in the document referred to in [this answer](http://math.stackexchange.com/a/204023/923). Unfortunately this assumes a rather advanced level from the reader, and familiarity with notation, so symbols and operators aren't explained there.2012-09-29
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    @stevenvh: Yes, I see the natural dilemma. Advanced texts assume advanced familiarity. Then again, they should not be the first texts in an area one encounters and all unexplained notation should be *established* notation, hence anybody prepared enough to read the advanced text should have read enough introductory texts which - hopefully - introduce standrd notation. Notation aside, a text about special aspects of the Riemann hypothesis will typically not explain in detail what a prime or a meromorphic function or the relation between $s$, $t$ and $\sigma$ is. It remains a dilemma though.2012-09-29
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    @HagenvonEitzen Thanks for the answer to that symbol. Shame I can not vote a comment :/2012-09-29
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    @stevenvh Yes, that's the document I was reading. I wanted to know the answer to that apparently easy problem, and got stuck in that expression. This monday I start my first year of the degree in computer science, and I wanted to improve my maths. The most interesting things I could find are all wrote in math notation. If I knew lots of this notation and maths I would create a webapp to add math symbols and descriptions and offer symbol lookup, so every one interested could decypher this kind of expressions2012-09-29

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Of course, Wikipedia does have at least some notation list.

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I've found that in mathworld there is a section where there are a lot of info about this notation. A shame I can't use the WolframAlpha search tool to put the unicode symbol and find it.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/Notation.html