The VED `ref' command may be used to access Poplog files which give a definitive description of the Pop-11 language, and its main system utilities. These files are definitely not intended for beginners, and many of them define quite sophisticated concepts quite tersely. The file called
REF REFFILESgives an overview of the main REF files for Pop-11, VED and the external interface. It is summarised at the end of this primer. There are additional REF files available for various sub-systems, for instance REF files for the X interface facilities, REF files for Objectclass, and so on.
The rest of this introduction is a summary of the core facilities in Pop-11. Many references will be given to online documentation which describes more advanced features, or which give more detailed information for experienced programmers. A full description of Pop-11 would require a document several times the size of this one.
We start in the next chapter by describing in some detail an example which illustrates how to use Pop-11 as a list-processing language with a fairly conventional syntax. Later chapters provide more general definitions of the language and some of its most useful facilities.