# Checking for Equality and for Equivalence of Symbolic Expressions

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/checking-for-equality-and-for-equivalence-of-symbolic-expressions/61276>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** symbolics\
**Created:** [May 17, 2021, 1:57am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/checking-for-equality-and-for-equivalence-of-symbolic-expressions/61276 "2021-05-17T01:57:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GpuCoder](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gpucoder/32/24511_2.png) [@GpuCoder](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/GpuCoder)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 1:57am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/checking-for-equality-and-for-equivalence-of-symbolic-expressions/61276/1 "2021-05-17T01:57:28Z")

</div>

I’m having trouble even checking for syntactic equivalence

```
julia> using Symbolics

julia> @variables t
1-element Vector{Num}:
 t

julia> (t^2 - t^3) == (t^2 - t^3)
(t^2 - (t^3)) == (t^2 - (t^3))

julia> (t^2 - t^3) === (t^2 - t^3)
false

```

I’d like a comparison that recognizes that

```
-t^3 + t^2 == t^2 - t^3

```

That is, algebraic equivalence, not just syntactic equivalence.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aramirezreyes](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/aramirezreyes/32/42573_2.png) [@aramirezreyes](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/aramirezreyes)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 5:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/checking-for-equality-and-for-equivalence-of-symbolic-expressions/61276/3 "2021-05-17T05:50:51Z")

</div>

> [@GpuCoder](#):
>
> `-t^3 + t^2 == t^2 - t^3`

Does this work?

```julia
julia> isequal(-t^3 + t^2, t^2 - t^3)
true

```