This section is intended to provide tips and techniques that enables you to produce highly efficient PL/I applications.
There are many factors that affect an application's performance. These include the choice of task-solving algorithms; choice of implementation language; choice of hosting system/subsystem; choice of computer hardware; etc...
PL/I is an extremely powerful programming language that provides multiple ways of accomplishing the same task; some ways are inherently more complex and thus slower, while others are much more efficient. In some cases, the complex feature may be the only choice. Generally, keeping to the most suitable and simple language features, such as using the most appropriate data types, data structures, and logic constructs, often results in the best performance.
The following topics suggest ways to use language features of PL/I that will result in efficient, yet highly maintainable applications.