How to expand fully with complex numbers?

Hello all,

Might be a rookie question but I am wondering how to do FOIL multiplication with complex numbers. This far I've managed to get something displaying a polynomial As^4 + Bs^3 + Cs^2 + ... , however all coefficients are complex numbers and I would like the imaginary components of these to cancel out as they do when performing this by hand.

Even a point in the right direction would be appreciated!

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

clear all %an example

syms x

polynomial=i*x-x.^2 %i indicates imaginary number

a = coeffs(polynomial)

real(a)

[Marissa van Wyngaardt]

Worked like a charm, thank you so much!

[madhan ravi]

you're welcome :)