
230 Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/VSE Basics
9.6.1 PL/I program structure
PL/I is a block-structured language consisting of procedures, begin blocks,
statements, expressions, and built-in functions, as shown in Figure 9-4.
Figure 9-4 PL/I application structure
PL/I programs are made up of blocks. A block can be either a subroutine or just a
group of statements. A PL/I block allows you to produce highly modular
applications, because blocks can contain declarations that define variable names
and storage classes. Thus, you can restrict the scope of a variable to a single
block or a group of blocks, or you can make it known throughout the co ...