It seems to my admitedly limited knowledge of Maple that all of what you typed is correct and the correct answers were displayed. So I guess the rest is up the the experts, but still what is it you want as an output ?? everything you copied was somehow not quite right because no matter how I input example 1 I get the correct answer.

Thank you for the advise. I plan on attacking it again today it just seems to me I missed some critical step somewhere.

I'll try again with the sheet.

Download double.mw

try this.

(a+b)*(a-b)

that will give you.

(a+b) (a-b)

then

expand(%)

that will give you the desired

a^2-b^2

sorry don't know how to put commands into these things yet... I'm a techno pesant.