Polynom Package Multiplication

Question

Ok! So...was really pleased when I discovered that polynom will just do polynomial long division for me like it's no big deal. But...is there a function for multiplying polynomials? I seem to have found something called \polymul in the manual, but...there isn't any detail about how to use it (and I keep getting errors when trying to multiply simple polynomials): http://cs.brown.edu/about/system/managed/latex/doc/polynom.pdf

Any suggestions would be helpful!

Answer 1

Looking at the manual, you could do something like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polynom}
\begin{document}
% the next two lines are just to save the two polynoms we want to multiply to \PolynomA and \PolynomB
\polyadd\PolynomA{x-1}{0} % adding zero: trick mentioned in the manual
\polyadd\PolynomB{x^2+2}{0}%
% multiply A and B, save to \SomePolynom
\polymul\SomePolynom\PolynomA\PolynomB
\begin{equation}
(\polyprint\PolynomA)(\polyprint\PolynomB)=\polyprint\SomePolynom
\end{equation}    
\end{document}

In general, you do \polymul\SomeMacronameYouDecideYourself{<first polynom>}{<second polynom>}. To get useful output, you need to use \polyprint\SomeMacronameYouDecideYourself.