The title says it all - although in the documentation of the Maple Toolbox for Matlab you can read that it is fully compatible with Matlab's Symbolic Math Toolbox, this is actually not the case. So better do not expect that after you install the Maple Toolbox you'll be able to use your old m-files that worked OK with Symbolic Math Toolbox - they might work, if they rely only on the most basic features. However, as soon as you need anything a little bit more complicated, you'll experience a lot of difficulties. One example for all - with Symbolic Math Toolbox you can have: >> var_str = '[a; b]' % symbolic matrix represented as char