Hi all!

I'm very new to Houdini coming from Maya and starting to grasp it fairly well but my one hang up is expressions and languages in Houdini. The documentation, unless I'm totally missing it, doesn't cover the basics (like…zero Python/C++/etc type knowledge) Closest I can find is covering rand($F) type functions.
I'm looking for something that starts as basic as what * or ^ do (I know those, but I can't find any documentation that says it!) My level is more simple “if/then” type statements in Nuke. Trying to get my grasp on Houdini )


Any help would be greatly greatly appreciated.

Docs:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.1/expressions/ [sidefx.com]

make sure to follow links from above page, specially:
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.1/expressions/_patterns [sidefx.com]
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.1/expressions/_globals [sidefx.com]
http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.1/expressions/_custom [sidefx.com]

also excellent video, pdf, example hips:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1500&Itemid=254 [sidefx.com]
as described here:
http://www.sidefx.com/images/stories/tutorials/expressions/documentation.pdf [sidefx.com]

and Python master class:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1810&Itemid=344 [sidefx.com]

and previous one:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1827&Itemid=344 [sidefx.com]

I've read over the first link you sent many times…and never noticed the links for patterns and others. Thank you for posting this!