Find constants in a symbolic vector

Hello friends!

I have a simple question but found it difficult to come up with a perfect answer. I explain by a simple example. Consider the following

syms x y

f = [x^2+y; 2; 3*x^4*y^2; 5; 1/x; 12];

What I need to get is the vector [x^2+y; 3*x^4*y^2; 1/x]. However, this trurns out to be difficult to implement. One idea

would be to see which elements have zero derivative. But, then, derivative with respect to which variable? Of course,

I should consider derivative with respect to all variables because 1/x has 0 derivative with respect to y. But, the problem

with this approach (although it works) is that it is computationally very expensive in reality. Please note that in practice

I have very long vectors and need to repeat this process many times, but the vector considered here is just an example. Another,

idea is to use the command X = findSymType(expr,'constant') but it considers all constants and does not do what I want.

Any idea?

Thanks in advance!

Babak

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

syms x y
f = [x^2+y; 2; 3*x^4*y^2; 5; 1/x; 12]

f = 

f(hasSymType(f, 'variable'))

ans = 

However, if you were considering derivative 0, then that raises the question of what to do about π -- and for that matter, whether your criteria is "no variables" or if you would want to retain an expression such as 1 + sqrt(2) (constants but expression).

Then too the question arises about what should be done with expressions such as int(x^2,x,3,5) as those are actually constants: if an expression includes a variable but only in bound form such as in int() or symprod() or symsum() then those expressions are actually constants.

[Mohammad Shojaei Arani]

Thanks Walter,

Your answer was great as always!