Data Factoring

PL/I supports several flavors of attribute factoring in the DECLARE statement. Factoring enables grouping of variable names and attributes.

For example:

declare (A,B,C,D) binary fixed (31);
declare (E decimal(6,5), F character(10)) static;
declare 1 A, 2(B,C,D) (3,2) binary fixed (15);
declare ((A,B) fixed(10),C float(5)) external;
Warning: The Plug-in only supports these two factoring flavors:
  • The following declares three level 1 variables a, b, and c:

    dcl (a, b, c) fixed bin(10);

  • Each variable can have a level number, for example:

    dcl 1 root,
   (2 a, 2 b) fixed bin(31);

    The above declares a major structure, root, with level 2 variables a and b.