HP Prime

[gbh]

I, who started this thread, have found the HP Prime manual somewhat better than I first thought.
And, the built-in help files are often useful. But, some basic things that could have been explained in the manual in a page or two are not mentioned. Just a few examples, of perhaps 20 or so that I've encountered so far:

(1) What does putting a variable in single quotes (e.g., 'X') mean, and why?

(2) == AND = are supposedly different, but = seems to work where == ostensibly would be required; e.g., (n=2) returns 1. Are = and == equivalent in some contexts and not others?

(3) Are := and the little right-pointing arrow (Store) always equivalent, or just sometimes?

(4) How to declare "locally global" variables and functions---those to be shared by all the subroutines of a program (without passing arguments in parentheses). Evidently such variables and functions are declared before the first Export Func() statement. I had to figure this out from examples on the internet, and I'm not sure I really understand it. A few sentences in the manual would clarify the procedure.

(5A) Most important of all, how is the lowest variable in the RPN stack (x, #1) accessed by or imported into a PPL program? The manual is strangely silent on such topics.

(5B) The manual says that Ans returns the last answer, but in fact it returns the last two operands, as a list. Why?

A useful supplement to the manual would be a long, complex program example, illustrating as many techniques and function as possible, with these features explicitly labeled by comments. The dice-rolling programs in the manual are a good start, but don't go far enough.

Earlier responses in this thread made me realize that the HP Prime is a "work in progress", not a finished product. So, I guess we're all doing HP's product testing for them. That's okay with me, as in the meantime the Prime is already a very cool and useful product (and an amazing assemblage of hardware and software for ca. $100). I just hope the next major task of the "work in progress" is to fix the interface between RPN and the rest of the system.