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I am pretty new to patterns in Mathematica. Here is the example I want to consider:
<<NC`
<<NCAlgebra`
SetNonCommutative[a, b, c, d, e]
ReplaceRepeated[a ** b ** c ** d ** e, {X___**c**d**Y___ -> X**Y}]
That is, I want to remove c**d from the multiplcation chain. However, the output I am getting is
a b e
That is, the multiplication is now commutative. That is clearly not correct. Why does this happen?
Short answer is replacement with ** is trick. See section ReplaceAll (/.) and ReplaceRepeated (//.) often fail of the manual. The best fix is to use the NCReplace family of functions. But you still need to be carefull.
In your case there is a lot going on here for it to fail. Let me start with a couple of alternatives.
NCReplaceAll[a ** b ** c ** d ** e, c ** d -> Sequence[]]is the simplest way to do it that I can think of. A pattern like yours would also work if you make the rule delayed, as in
NCReplaceAll[ a ** b ** c ** d ** e, {X___ ** c ** d ** Y___ :> X ** Y}]This works because the right-hand side of the rule is only evaluated after the match, at which time X and Y hold noncommutative symbols and the ** survives the evaluation. The reason why your rule is failing is because the right-hand side, that is X ** Y is evaluated before the match is done. At that time, X and Y are the global X and Y which are, in the absence of a SetNonCommutative command, commutative. Therefore X ** Y evaluates to X Y before the rule is even applied. To make it even more confusing, the rule
NCReplaceAll[ a ** b ** c ** d ** e, {x___ ** c ** d ** y___ -> x ** y}]would have worked because x and y are set as noncommutative by default so that the right-hand side evaluates to x**y even if you use -> instead of :>.
