Simplification

I added some trivial simplification rules to my math parser. It checks for simple rules like x+0 -> x or x+x -> 2x.

Of course, you could go way deeper on simplification. My current implementation can’t simplify 2*x + 3*x -> 5*x, since my rules only match syntactically identical terms, not terms that differ by a coefficient. To handle cases like this, you’d need some sort of term-collection method that groups like terms together before combining them.

You could also expand expressions first and then simplify, which would let the parser recognize things like (x+1)^2 - (x^2+2x+1) -> 0.

My simple rules won’t bring expressions into their absolute simplest form, and they certainly don’t produce a standardized form that lets you check two expressions for equality. But they do make the program’s output noticeably more readable.