It is important to note that the del operator in cylindrical coordinates is not the same as the del operator in Cartesian coordinates. Also to be noted is that in arriving at the definition of the gradient in cylindrical coordinates, we have not used the del operator, only the gradient in Cartesian coordinates and the transformations of coordinates and unit vectors. The process is rather tedious but is straightforward. We will use this process again in future sections but without repeating the details. The main advantage of doing so is that although we use the del operator as a symbolic description or as a notation, there is no need to perform any operations on the operator itself. We avoid these operations because the del operator is not a true vector.