PL/I is a general-purpose programming language, which is used for solving problems in a variety of fields such as commerce, science (including mathematics, physics, chemistry), engineering (including civil, electrical, aeronautics), medicine and so on. It can be used for system programming, and the facilitites are such that it is rarely if ever necessary to resort to machine-language or assembly-language programming to solve problems.
PL/I has outstanding facilities for commercial and business use. It has more power than Pascal, Fortran 95, BASIC, C, and COBOL, and has comparable facilities to Ada. The main areas where PL/I is superior include interrupt handling, the built-in debugging aids, the macro processor facilities, string-handling, and input-output (see below).
The language has good documenting and self-documenting facilities; programs are easy to read and to understand. It bears some resemblance to Fortran and BASIC.
The language is suitable for beginners, as well as for anyone wanting to become a professional.
