This function can be used in external code with OpenMaple or define_external.

The MapleUnique function processes the Maple expression, s, and returns the unique normalized copy of that expression. For example, if you create the number num = one-billion, and then compute the number val = 2*500-million, an address comparison of num and val does not indicate equality. After calling num = MapleUnique(kv,num);, both num and val point to the same memory.

Because Maple maintains a table of unique elements, only one copy of most objects exists in memory.  The expression  contains two references to , but both point to the same object.  Similarly,  contains two sublists, .  The surrounding list maintains two pointers to the same sublist.  It is usually not safe to directly modify any object that has been processed by Maple. For example, if the sublist were changed from  to , the parent list also changes.  In fact, all references to the list  in Maple would then point to . This would cause many problems. For example, table lookups of the  element would be changed to look up the  element.  It is safe to directly modify only data blocks of mutable objects like rtables and tables.  Never change strings returned by MapleToString, or expression sequences like the args object given to the external entry point.