Printing option for Complex{Num} to avoid printing real and imaginary part

[davidschlegel]

This is a feature request.
I was wondering if one could somehow switch the behavior for printing expressions of type Complex{Num} to behave just like the ordinary Num. This would in many situations make expressions much cleaner to view.

[philip-stuckey]

It would be nice to have different "views" on an expression ("Form" seems to already be taken) for doing things like splitting a vector equation into components (expand would fit nicely in that paradigm). The idea being that these transformations would change how expressions are represented but not their meaning

I have a workaround where I make a variable i and a "primed" variable for the conjugates of complex variables, and substituting what I need by hand

[erny123]

Definitely agree with this. The fact that Symbolics automatically splits into real and imaginary, and the automatic assumption that variables and functions are real is problematic for complex mathematics. Rather than dealing with one equation, Symbolics splits it up into real and imaginary and you have to work with two equation which is unnecessary.

Is it worth having symbolics own complex types?
@philip-stuckey I have also done the same thing and defined my own functions such as conjugate() and others to work around this.

[ChrisRackauckas]

It has its own complex type? @variables x::Complex IIRC.