# equations inside matrix/array — aligning on charater

Suppose I have a system of equations I'd like to present as a vector. Using amsmath, something like

$$\begin{pmatrix} (2)(2)+(-1)(-3) \\ (4)(2)+(3)(-3) \end{pmatrix}$$


What I'd like to do is not simply 'center the equations' within the vector (easy enough), but have them center-aligned on the '+' sign. I've tried embedding align within pmatrix, but that doesn't seem to work. In the end, it isn't critical that the equations are presented within a formal 'matrix' structure -- I'd be satisfied with a 'large enough' left and right delimiter.

Any suggestions welcomed.

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Welcome to TeX.SX. A tip: If you indent lines by 4 spaces, then they're marked as a code sample. You can also highlight the code and click the "code" button ({}) or hit Ctrl+K. –  Claudio Fiandrino Oct 23 '13 at 13:12

You can use the aligned environment, which is like align but to be used inside another math environment

\begin{pmatrix} \begin{aligned} (2)(2)&+(-1)(-3) \\ (4)(2)&+(3)(-3) \end{aligned} \end{pmatrix}


Alternatively, without using pmatrix, you can get large left/right delimiters by using \left/\right before the delimiters. For example, the following will produce the same result

\left( \begin{aligned} (2)(2)&+(-1)(-3) \\ (4)(2)&+(3)(-3) \end{aligned} \right)

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Is this what you mean?

If so, here is the code which uses my beta-version package \tabstackengine.sty, found at Writing a table with equally spaced columns, based on the widest column

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabstackengine}
\begin{document}
\left( \alignVectorstack{ (2)(2) +& (-1)(-3)\\ (4)(2) +& (3)(-3) } \right)
\end{document}

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