Free42: Unlimited-length strings and other type extensions

[John Keith]

(01-25-2021 10:32 AM)Thomas Okken Wrote:  

(01-25-2021 03:24 AM)Paul Dale Wrote:  I do wonder if Free42 is becoming more RPL like over time. When thinking about extending the WP 34S, I started to understand the decisions behind the 28 series. The more I dug into it, the more RPL looked like the most natural successor to RPN.

I agree about RPL being the natural successor to RPN. Thinking about Free42 internals has made me come to understand and appreciate the logic behind the RPL design a lot more.

However, I don't want to create an RPL clone. I do still find keystroke programming easier, probably because it's just a better fit for the limitations of a small screen and keyboard. When editing RPL, the calculator always feels cramped and I find myself wishing for a QWERTY keyboard and a screen that can display way more text. And the absence of goto, break, and continue is annoying.

Always nice to see more appreciation of RPL.

While a bigger display and keyboard are often wished for, I think that the power and flexibility of RPL more than makes up for the keyboard/display issues. RPL is almost certainly better than any other high level language for calculators in this regard.

I highly agree regarding BREAK and CONTINUE- I always find myself needing to fake them with kludgy FOR loops. OTOH I can't imagine a use for GOTO in a language like RPL.

Overall it is nice to see extensions and improvements to Free42 as long as they don't break compatibility with HP-42s programs. I am glad that you continue to see compatibility as important. However, we mostly use Free42 on our phones and PC's where EMU48 is also available. Therefor I'm not sure that extending Free42 in the direction of RPL is really needed.