Could someone please direct me or explain to me what all the brackets, lists, and r1-6 's are? I am a basic programmer, currently making the switch to axe. Thank you!

You may be interested in our extensive collection of Axe Parser Tutorials:

http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=articles;cat=12

Browse around there, there really is a whole bunch of useful stuff.

Also, be sure to check out the Axe Documentation.pdf file, the Commands.html file, and stuff like that. The commands.html file isn't so thorough, but it explains all the commands you can use, and gets you started so you can experiment with test-like programs to really figure stuff out. I remember reading about r1-r6 in Commands.html and thinking, uh, what? But it was all I needed to know to experiment and figure out what it meant.

Good luck

EDIT: Also, in case you don't already know, r1-r6 are found by pressing [vars]

I would highly recommend you look up pointers.  They're basically related to low-level manipulation of memory.  Googling it would pull up a bunch of explanations in C/C++, so ignore the specifics of the syntax and focus on trying to understand the concept.

.TEST

Text(0,0,L1>Dec)
Pause 1000

(The '>Dec' token can be found in the number menu).

L1 can be thought of as a constant that tells you the start of some free memory you can much around in.  Let's say (hypothetically speaking) that running the above program displayed the number '541'.  That means that starting from the 541th byte in RAM, you have (according to the documentation) about 700 bytes to play around in -- from the 541th byte to about the 1241th byte (give or take a little).

If you want to store anything to those bytes, you use curly brackets.

.TEST2

3->{L1}
4->{L1+5}

Text(0,0,{L1}>Dec)
Text(0,8,{L1+5}>Dec)
Pause 100

This would store the number '3' to the 541th byte, and the number '4' to the 546th byte, and display first the number '3' then the number '4'.

Finding a segment of free memory (by using this method, or by allocating program memory/making an appvar, which is more complicated), is the only way you can have lists or arrays in Axe.

Sometimes, though, you just don't have enough free RAM to be able to do anything complex.

You can use square brackets to store raw data directly into your program.

.TEST3

[01020A0B]->P
That would store a bunch of hex (in this case, exactly 4 bytes), and store the pointer to the variable P.

If I did...

.TEST4

[01020A0B]->P

Text(0,0,{P+2}>Dec)
Pause 1000
That would display the 3rd byte (indexes start at zero), which would be the number '10' (in hex, 0A is ten).

This is a good way to store and read, say, a tilemap or level data.

r1 to r6 are variables, just like A, B, C, and D.  If you pass values to functions, they'll be stored to r1 to r6.

Also, one thing that tripped me up when I started Axe -- you don't need curly braces to store and read from simple variables like A, B, or r1.