how to count the number of terms in syms

Hello!

I have a syms variable let's say A which is an addition of many terms say: A=a+b-c*a+a*b-d+... I want to count the number of added terms in A, how can I do that? my matlab version is 2012 by the way.

Thank you!

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

Try this

syms a b c d

A=a+b-c*a+a*b-d+a*c;
num_terms = numel(regexp(char(A), '[+-]?'))+1;

[EllaD]

This worked like a charm! Thank you :)

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

feval(symengine, 'nops', A)

In newer releases you can numel(children(A)) but that is several years after your version

[EllaD]

Thanks but it seems that this doesnt work, I have 87 terms but this outputs 3.

EDIT: It is strange though, I checked this code for 5 terms and it does work.

Answer 3

[KSSV]

You can get the number of sym variables present in the work spce using:

s = whos ;
iwant = nnz(strcmp({s(:).class},'sym'))