Many Thanks Krithika Both methods work wonderfully. That blank operator `` is somewhat hard to find in Maple's help. I cannot get to it by typing ?``. By entering directly to Maple's help and search for `` I get to the description of the Empty Symbol, but doesn't mention anything about the non-simplifying feature of ``, maybe because I'm running Maple 11 and it is not up to date. Thankfully you have cleared the issue perfectly. Jose