Programming HP Calculators/Commands

There are several subsets of the calculator commands. They are presented here along with a short summary of their features.

''This section is currently incomplete. The status of each sub-section is written in italics below its link.''

Aplet Commands
Current status: 0 of 4 commands completed. (0%)

The aplet commands are the commands used for building aplets (not applets) on the calculator. Most of these are fairly advanced, and you should have mastered other programming skills before you use the aplet commands, as they work on existing programs.

Branch Commands
Current status: 4 of 5 commands completed. (80%)

The branch commands are used to set the program to do different tasks depending on a certain situation. More information on branching (or "jumping") in programming can be found at Wikipedia: Jump instruction.

Drawing Commands
Current status: 7 of 7 commands completed. (100%)

The drawing commands are used for drawing images on the screen. They are differentiated from graphic commands by the fact that they interface with the display, not graphic objects (GROBs). That is to say, using a command such as ARC will draw on the screen, not in a GROB.

Graphic Commands
Current status: 6 of 12 commands completed. (50%)

The graphic commands are used for creating and modifying GROBs - GRaphic OBjects. These are essentially variables on the calculator from G0 to G9 that can contain graphic information, ie. a 1-bit bitmap.

Loop Commands
Current status: 0 of 4 commands completed. (0%)

The loop commands are used to set the calculator to keep performing an action until a certain condition is satisfied. For example, to display all the numbers from 1 to 100, you could use a loop command, rather than individually writing code to display each number.

Matrix Commands
Current status: 1 of 10 commands completed. (10%)

The matrix commands are used to edit and modify matrices, ie. the variables M0 to M9.

Print Commands
Current status: 0 of 3 commands completed. (0%)

The print commands are used to send information to HP's separately-sold infrared printer. They are generally not very useful.

Prompt Commands
Current status: 7 of 10 commands completed. (70%)

Prompt commands are used to ask the user for information, or alert the user to some fact. These are amongst the most important commands available for your use.

Stat Commands
Current status: 0 of 7 commands completed. (0%)

The stat commands are actually two groups of commands, Stat-One and Stat-Two. These two groups represent one-variable and two-variable statistics modes, respectively. They are used for editing statistics and performing statistical functions.

Easter Egg Commands
Current status: 8 of 8 commands completed. (100%)

An "easter egg" is a common term used to refer to "hidden" or undocumented features in a program or operating system, in this case, the calculator. The commands documented here are not in the CMDS menu, and they are not documented by HP. Most of them don't serve any useful purpose.