Ce langage utilise une pile et est pourvu des instructions classiques de boucles et tests. Il intègre également des commandes pour le traitement des listes.
Notes et références
↑(en) William C. Wickes, RPL : A Mathematical Control Language, Rochester, New York, USA, Institute for Applied Forth Research, Inc., , 27-32 p.
« Several existing operating systems and languages were considered, but none could meet all of the design objectives. A new system was therefore developed, which merges the threaded interpretation of Forth with the functional approach of Lisp. The resulting operating system, known unofficially as RPL (for Reverse-Polish Lisp), made its first public appearance in June of 1986 in the HP-18C(en) Business Consultant calculator. »
↑ a et bWilliam C. Wickes, « RPL stands for Reverse Polish Lisp », www.hpcalc.org, (consulté le ) : « RPL stands for Reverse Polish Lisp. In the early days of RPL development, we got tired of calling the unnamed system "the new system", and one of the development team came up with "RPL", both as a play on "RPN" which has been the loved/hated hallmark of HP calcs forever, and as an accurate indication of the derivation of the language from Forth and Lisp. RPL was never particularly intended to be a public term; at the time of the HP Journal article (August 1987) on the HP 28C there was an attempt to create a less whimsical name--hence "ROM-based procedural language," which preserved the initials but had a more dignified sound. The development team never calls it anything but (the initials) RPL. You can choose either of the two full-word versions that you prefer. Or how about "Rich People's Language?" Bill Wickes, HP Corvallis. »
↑(en) Włodek A. C. Mier-Jedrzejowicz, A Guide to HP Handheld Calculators and Computers, HHC 2011, , 5e éd. (ISBN978-1-888840-30-8)
« RPL stands for Reverse Polish Lisp - it combined the RPN calculator language of earlier models with features of the Lisp and Forth programming languages. For a time HP explained the letters RPL as an acronym for "ROM-based Procedural Language". »
↑whilst for a short while in 1987 HP marketing attempted to coin the backronym ROM-based Procedural Language for it
(en) « NewRPL, une implémentation modernisée du RPL », (consulté le ) Information et téléchargement du NewRPL, évolution du RPL, 200 fois plus rapide pour HP49g+, 50g et Android