FOCAL (HP-41)

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FOCAL (an acronym from F Orty O ne Ca lculator L anguage ) is the most common name of the programming language for the series calculator HP-41 of Hewlett-Packard , with the model HP-41C was started.

FOCAL offers more options than simple pocket calculator programming in the early days of computers, in which a sequence of keystrokes that you would type in to manually solve a problem (possibly supplemented by condition queries and jump commands) was saved as a program sequence. However, FOCAL offers fewer possibilities than the object-oriented , significantly more complex " RPL " language of the later, further developed models HP-28 and the HP-48 series.

FOCAL enables letters to be input and output and user input to be received upon request, and has proven to be powerful enough to expand the functionality of the HP-41 models over and over again.

This programming language is not to be confused with the programming language of the same name for DEC large / mini computers of the PDP series (also known as FOCAL-69 ).

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