@acer If I create a bunch of files to save different items or different versions of the same item do I risk cluttering up my hard drive? As a matter of hygiene should I be erasing those files somehow when I am done?

I loooked for help with commands using the Programming Guide. That was my big  mistake; the Maple Users Manual is much more appropriate. 

@acer You are right (perhaps "write"?) the save command is exactly what is needed. I noticed I could also save several outputs easily
save p,q,"test.m";

but when i tried to read p ,"test.m"; that did't work.
I just enter read "test.m"; and then p and q are available. Okay that is fine.

I also tried to save r also by
save r,  "test.m";

but p and q were then apparently overwritten.

Is there a simple way of having a running file of variables I want to save or do I just enter save p,q,r, "test.m"; 

BTW, the help pages I was looking at were in online help, Programming, Input Output. I did not find those easy to navigete/

Thank you for showing how to do what I wanted to do.

As to my comments on with(plots) 

It was very useful in Release 1 of Maple to only load the plots package when needed because I only had 1 Mb of RAM and storage was a pair of 400Kb floppies. Now in 2026 cheap computers come with at least 8Gb RAM and 256Gb storage. The original plots package was GREAT for its time (you could maniipulate 3D plots with your mouse in Maple, not in MMA) so the modern plots package is probably not that much bigger and could be loaded automatically at startup or when Maple detected
a command like pointplot. No need to burden the user unnecessarily, 

Finally, about the typo I made with(Plots). 

As someone is sure to point out Maple is case sensitive. That overlooks that first and foremost Maple is a commercially available product and if Maple wants to stay a viable product it has to say The customer is always right. Autocorrect is available on every texting device, wordprocessing device etc. Maple could IF IT CHOOSES accomodate typos and errors of capitalization. Can you imagine a restaurant not taking your order because you did not place the napkin on your lap properly?
If Maple can easily undersatnd what is meant it could accept the intent or perhaps inquire if you meaant Describe (proc) instaed of describe (proc). As a Maple Ambassador for many years I strive to convince students that Maple is a very useful tool for their use not an electronic fussbudget . I illustrate that with plot(x^2) and diff(sin(x),x) and they are hooked. If they had to read some of the help pages their eyes would immediately gloss over. Please, forgive my typos as we forgive some of the strange choices of Maple syntax.

@C_R  I think my original post was a bit snarky; I apologize for that. I really was being sarcastic when I suggested that the dicumentation for the description option was sabotage, 

However, it would be very simple to write a few lines of code that would allow a user to write describe (f) or description(f) or Description (f) . There is a difference between being being picky and being precise. Successful products, web sites, etc. are user friendly. They bend over backwards to understand what the customer wants. 

An example is the Help facility. If you look up procedure you get many pages of detail nefore you get to an example. That is completely backwards from what would be helpful. Most people want a simple example followed by more complicated examples foloowed perhaps by something more encyclopedic-not the othe way round.

To verify my assertions ask yourself when you ever read the instructions for a new product/device/program before using it. Most of us cheat-the quickstart blurb is as far as we get.

I think Maple Help pages are written by very competent and knowledeable users/developers. That is not what I want. If I want to use some feature on my phone I ask a grandchild how to do it and get a straightforward answer.

@nm Many thanks. I looked at it for many hours without spotting my error.

I wonder if there is an AI "supervisor" that might be able to help with such errors. As I age I find I am more prone to waste time hunting for my mistakes.

@acer Thanks-I will check the document

@acer Thanks for clarification.

@dharr I think I get it. How does Maple know the size of the Array xpts?

Also, I am happy with eval(...,a=20) etc rather than parameters I though that was disparaged now.

@acer Thank you. I will copy your answer and apply it to my problem. 

What I would really like is the syntax to get a vector with entries y1(xn) corresponding to one parameter value and another vector with entries y2(xn) corresponding to another parameter value. The point being that I want the same xn values for each vector. I could of course just make up my list of xn's -say equally spaced over the range-and then call ds0lve 500 times for each parameter value but I am sure that if I call ans(1.7) where ans :=dsolev(eq...) it will compute many intermediate values abyhow so I thought I could speed things up by asking for those values. Since I suspect that dsolve uses adaptive step sizes the call for ans(1.7) with another parameter values might well have different xnn values.

@nm Many thanks.

@nm If I do

"If you do not want to explicitly add the read() to each worksheet which needs the shared code, you can put this read() command in your maple .ini file so it is read automatically each time you start/open a worksheet."

won't all that junk get added to all worksheets I open whether related to the project or not?

@acer 

Thank for the explanation. I never thought of opening the file ina text editor.

@acer 

Thanks for your suggestion.

I am a sloppy typist and I wonder if perhaps I enterred control something rather than option something when I was trying for a Greek lettter or some such. If the 'character"  was invisible that would explain why I could not figure out what was happening. How did you find out the XML property view="presentation" part?

@Scot Gould dead_command.mw

Thanks for showing me how to upload worksheets.

The file is part of a project but it exhibits the problem I have. I cannot copy the command into a Maple prompt region.

Thanks for your interest.

@Scot Gould 

As I said, I can type in the commands (even with mis-spellings) and iy is okay. Why cannot I copy the text? What type of region does it copy to? There is no Maple prompt.

@Scot Gould 

I can't find any instructions.When I try to drag and drop it says "file format not supported"