Changing the elements of the list based on subscripts

Question

Say I have a list of lists:

{{Subscript[a,1],Subscript[a,1]+Subscript[a,2],Subscript[a,-3]},
 {Subscript[a,1],Subscript[a,-2],Subscript[a,-4]}}

Now, in the sublists of that list, if an element has a negative subscript I want to change this element to a negative of that element with a positive subscript, so if I applied this to the list above I'd get:

{{Subscript[a,1],Subscript[a,1]+Subscript[a,2],-Subscript[a,3]},
 {Subscript[a,1],-Subscript[a,2],-Subscript[a,4]}}

I don't really know how to do it. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use pattern matching for this:

expr = {{Subscript[a, 1], Subscript[a, 1] + Subscript[a, 2],    Subscript[a, -3]}, {Subscript[a, 1], Subscript[a, -2], Subscript[a, -4]}}

expr /. Subscript[a, n_Integer /; n < 0] :> - Subscript[a, -n]