Hi Marco,

Thanks for the response.

The step-by-step on the second equation is helpful until about halfway through when it starts doing some weird algebra that ends up with y'' mixed in with the other terms. Another weird thing is that the end result of the step-by-step is different than the initial result shown on the main page (i.e. it solves for y').

I'm a newbie to Mathematica and have been trying to mix in learning its syntax along with my other work. I'm curious about the following bit; can you break this down for me just a little bit -- mainly what the "/." does?

y'[x] + x y''[x] == y[x]/x  /. {y'[x] -> -2 - y[x]/x}

I tried a number of things to get this to work so I can't remember them all. I do recall using the following 2 queries:

(d^2 y(x))/(dx^2) x^2+ xy(x)=5

second derivative x^2+xy(x)=5

I'm surprised that there isn't an easily discovered way to do this since it obviously can calculate y'' as evidenced by the results I got from just entering the equation by itself. I wish that there was more documentation on the recognized syntax but I imagine that based on the wide-ranging nature of the Wolfram Alpha engine that it would require volumes of it so that's probably too much to ask.

Thanks again,
Gary