Generalizations of a property of orthogonal projectors

Generalizing the result in Lemma of Baksalary and Baksalary [J.K. Baksalary, O.M. Baksalary, Commutativity of projectors, Linear Algebra Appl. 341 (2002) 129-142], Baksalary et al. [J.K. Baksalary, O.M. Baksalary, T. Szulc, Linear Algebra Appl. 354 (2002) 35-39] have shown that if P₁ and P₂ are orthogonal projectors, then, in all nontrivial situations, a product of any length having P₁ and P₂ as its factors occurring alternately is equal to another such product if and only if P₁ and P₂ commute, in which case all products involving P₁ and P₂ reduce to the orthogonal projector P₁P₂ (= P₂P₁). In the present paper, further generalizations of this property are established. They consist in replacing a product of the type specified above, appearing on the left-hand side (say) of the equality under considerations, by an affine combination of two or three such products. Comments on the problem when the number of components in a combination exceeds three are also given.