Application programming on z/OS
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More information about the PL/I language

Application programming on z/OS

The PL/I compiler is designed according to the specifications of industry standards as understood and interpreted by IBM® as of December 1987.

  • American National Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), X3.4 - 1977
  • American National Standard Representation of Pocket Select Characters in Information Interchange, level 1, X3.77 - 1980 (proposed to ISO, March 1, 1979)
  • The draft proposed American National Standard Representation of Vertical Carriage Positioning Characters in Information Interchange, level 1, dpANS X3.78 (also proposed to ISO, March 1, 1979)
  • Selected features of the American National Standard PL/I General Purpose Subset (ANSI X3.74-1987).
  • Input and output
    PL/I input and output statements (such as READ, WRITE, GET, PUT) let you transmit data between the main storage and auxiliary storage of a computer.
  • Data transmission
    PL/I uses two types of data transmission: stream and record.
  • Data sets
    In addition to being used as input from and output to your terminal, data sets are stored on a variety of auxiliary storage media, including magnetic tape and direct access storage devices (DASDs). Despite their variety, these media have characteristics that allow common methods of collecting, storing, and transmitting data. The organization of a data set determines how data is recorded in a data set and how the data is subsequently retrieved so that it can be transmitted to the program. Records are stored in and retrieved from a data set either sequentially, on the basis of successive physical or logical positions, or directly, by the use of keys specified in data transmission statements.
  • Data declarations
    When a PL/I program is executed, it can manipulate many different data items of particular data types. Each data item, except an unnamed arithmetic or string constant, is referred to in the program by a name. Each data name is given attributes and a meaning by a declaration (explicit or implicit).
  • PL/I interfaces to other products
    PL/I can interface with sort programs, C, the Checkpoint/Restart facility, and user exits.
Parent topic: PL/I on z/OS

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