Convert matlab symbol to array of products - matlab

Question

Can I convert a symbol that is a product of products into an array of products?
I tried to do something like this:
syms A B C D;
D = A*B*C;
factor(D);
but it doesn't factor it out (mostly because that isn't what factor is designed to do).
ans =
A*B*C
I need it to work if A B or C is replaced with any arbitrarily complicated parenthesized function, and it would be nice to do it without knowing what variables are in the function.
For example (all variables are symbolic):
D = x*(x-1)*(cos(z) + n);
factoring_function(D);
should be:
[x, x-1, (cos(z) + n)]
It seems like a string parsing problem, but I'm not confident that I can convert back to symbolic variables afterwards (also, string parsing in matlab sounds really tedious).
Thank you!

Answer 1

Use regexp on the string to split based on *:
>> str = 'x*(x-1)*(cos(z) + n)';
>> factors_str = regexp(str, '\*', 'split')
factors_str =
'x' '(x-1)' '(cos(z) + n)'
The result factor_str is a cell array of strings. To convert to a cell array of sym objects, use
N = numel(factors_str);
factors = cell(1,N); %// each cell will hold a sym factor
for n = 1:N
factors{n} = sym(factors_str{n});
end

Answer 2

I ended up writing the code to do this in python using sympy. I think I'm going to port the matlab code over to python because it is a more preferred language for me. I'm not claiming this is fast, but it serves my purposes.
# Factors a sum of products function that is first order with respect to all symbolic variables
# into a reduced form using products of sums whenever possible.
# #params orig_exp A symbolic expression to be simplified
# #params depth Used to control indenting for printing
# #params verbose Whether to print or not
def factored(orig_exp, depth = 0, verbose = False):
# Prevents sympy from doing any additional factoring
exp = expand(orig_exp)
if verbose: tabs = '\t'*depth
terms = []
# Break up the added terms
while(exp != 0):
my_atoms = symvar(exp)
if verbose:
print tabs,"The expression is",exp
print tabs,my_atoms, len(my_atoms)
# There is nothing to sort out, only one term left
if len(my_atoms) <= 1:
terms.append((exp, 1))
break
(c,v) = collect_terms(exp, my_atoms[0])
# Makes sure it doesn't factor anything extra out
exp = expand(c[1])
if verbose:
print tabs, "Collecting", my_atoms[0], "terms."
print tabs,'Seperated terms with ',v[0], ', (',c[0],')'
# Factor the leftovers and recombine
c[0] = factored(c[0], depth + 1)
terms.append((v[0], c[0]))
# Combines trivial terms whenever possible
i=0
def termParser(thing): return str(thing[1])
terms = sorted(terms, key = termParser)
while i<len(terms)-1:
if equals(terms[i][1], terms[i+1][1]):
terms[i] = (terms[i][0]+terms[i+1][0], terms[i][1])
del terms[i+1]
else:
i += 1
recombine = sum([terms[i][0]*terms[i][1] for i in range(len(terms))])
return simplify(recombine, ratio = 1)