what does the simplify command do?

I was just wondering what sort of things

simplify()

is able to handle. What exactly does it do?

I am trying to simplify an expression that will contain sums and products of square roots of polynomials of hyperbolic sine, cos, and tan functions in the numerator and denominator. Will it notice things like sinh^2(x) + 1 to substitute cosh^2(x) ? Will it try to take radicals out of the denominator?

Answer 1

[Wayne King]

Yes, in general it will but you may have to up the number of steps from 1 (the default)

For example:

syms x
simplify((sinh(x))^2+1)  % doesn't get what you want
simplify((sinh(x))^2+1,10)  % does