# Question:How to stop maple from rewriting equational form

## Question:How to stop maple from rewriting equational form

Maple

e.g., I have an equation that is written like a/b*c and maple rewrites it as a*c/b.

c is a complicated expression and when it's written with b under it, it takes up far more vertical spaces than necessary giving less visual resolution even if b is just 2.

In latex notation it is the difference between \frac{a}{b} c and \frac{ac}{b}.

In general what is the process? I noticed I can sometimes use   to block things in but this also interfers with mathamtical notation. e.g., 3^f becomes just that rather than f writen as a superscript.

Clearly I could hack it using various things but I want something direct and simple that tells maple not to try to do it's magic tricks.

For example, sometimes I might have 2*(a + b) and maple displays it as 2a + 2b. If I write it as 2*(a+b) then this is noted as 2*(a+b) but the 2 is different.. I guess it is treated as a string or something... For my cases it works since I'm not trying to calculate anything from the expression but just for visual purposes, other times though I might want to calculate(usually the visual doesn't matter in calculation but sometimes both are desired).

I really want to avoid having to litter the expressions with special syntax to get such simple behavior. Something to tell maple not to carry out whatever algebraic transform it is programmed to do.

BTW, what does ! do? !3 + 4 opens a new window with an exit code.

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