power rules

[Chris Dams]

Dear Emery,

On Sat, 22 May 2004, econrad wrote:

> I understand the rational behind not automatically making
> p^n/p^1=p^(n-1) when one doesn't know anything about n,

Actually, a^p*a^q=a^(p+q) for any complex numbers a, p and q.

> nevertheless, I know that I'll only be using a real n>1 (or in any case,
> I'll only use n that makes this a valid reduction). How can I force this
> power transformation to take place... I'm sure I can do some convoluted
> matching and replacing to get this to work, but a user should be able to
> give an option to "eval" or to "normal" to get this operation performed
> at their own risk, yes? Have I missed something?

This "convoluted matching and replacing" can be done by
using the method

	.subs
	(	power(wild(0),wild(1))*power(wild(0),wild(2)
			==power(wild(0),wild(1)+wild(2)),
		subs_options::subs_algebraic
	)

Best,
Chris Dams