use Math::Algebra::Symbols
    my ($foo) = symbols(qw(foo));

    my $result = ($foo * 2) + ($foo * 3);

    print "$result\n";
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    5 * $foo

Thanks for all the tips. I think Math::Algebra::Symbols was what I was looking for, but by the time I found it I had already written the script to just run the equations through mathomatic to simplify them.

First off, what you're trying to accomplish is called 'simplification', not minimization. I don't want to sound pedantic, but this could put your quest on the right track.

Secondly, you could have a look at Math::Symbolic. Unfortunately, the docs are sparse, so it's not clear to me what it does, but it seems to do at least some simplification.

Hope this helps, -gjb-

That's not exactly a trivial task. If you have something like Mathematica or Maple you could open a pipe to that and let it do the heavy lifting.

(foo*2) + (foo*3)
$ops = [
          [
            'foo',
            '*',
            '2'
          ],
          '+',
          [
            'foo',
            '*',
            '3'
          ]
        ];
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But for the case described above (and feel free to use this as a starting point to write your own comprehensive symbolic manipulation module), you can do:

$string =~ s/ //gs; # remove spaces
$string =~ s/\((\w+)\*(\d+)\)\+\(\1\*(\d+))/($1\*(?{$2+$3})\)/gsx;
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Which should do only exactly the substitution you describe above. (Needs testing)