Introduction

Built-in functions and subroutines are procedures provided by the Open PL/I language. They can be used wherever an expression is valid.

The built-in functions and subroutines provided by Open PL/I can be grouped into the following classes:

• Arithmetic built-in functions, which provide information about the properties of arithmetic values, or that perform ordinary arithmetic calculations. These include:

  ABS	EXP	LOG10	MOD	SIGN
  ADD	FLOOR	LOG2	MULTIPLY	SORT
  CEIL	INT	MAX	POSINT	TRUNC
  DIVIDE	LOG	MIN	ROUND

• Trigonometric built-in functions, which perform standard mathematical calculations in floating-point. These include:

  ACOS	ATAND	COSD	SIND	TAND
  ASIN	ATANH	COSH	SINH	TANH
  ATAN	COS	SIN	TAN

• String built-in functions, which process character-string and bit-string values. These include:

  BOOL	HIGH	LOW	SUBSTR	VALID
  COLLATE	INDEX	REPEAT	TRANSLATE	VERIFY
  COPY	LENGTH	STRING	TRIM

• Conversion built-in functions, which convert data from one data type to another. These include:

  BINARY	BYTE	DECIMAL	FLOAT	RANK
  BIT	CHARACTER	FIXED

• Condition-handling built-in functions, which provide information about interrupts that are caused by signaled conditions. These include:

  ONCHAR	ONFILE	ONKEY	ONLOC	ONSOURCE
  ONCODE

• Array-handling built-in functions, which provide information about arrays and array elements. These include:

  ALL	DIMENSION	LBOUND	PROD	SUM
  ANY	HBOUND

• Storage-handling built-in functions, which provide information on the storage requirements and location of variables. These include:

  ADDR	CURRENTSTORAGE	OFFSET	SIZE	STORAGE
  ALLOCATION	NULL	POINTER

• Miscellaneous built-in functions and subroutines. These include:

  DATE	LINENO	PLIRETV	PLITEST	TIME
  DATETIME	PAGENO	PLISRTx	RESIGNAL	UNSPEC
  FLUSH	PLIRETC

• Built-in character-handing functions which accept or return WIDECHAR character-type only.

  WIDECHAR / WCHAR

  WCHARVAL

  WHIGH

  WLOW

• Built-in character-handing functions which accept WIDECHAR arguments where character-type arguments apply; when the return value is a character-string the return type is WIDECHAR if any WIDECHAR arguments are passed.

  LEFT	RIGHT	CENTERLEFT / CENTRELEFT	CENTERRIGHT / CENTRERIGHT	CHARACTER / CHAR
  COPY	INDEX	LENGTH	MAXLENGTH	RANK
  REPEAT	REVERSE	SEARCH	SEARCHR	SUBSTR
  TALLY	TRIM	UNSPEC	VERIFY	VERIFYR

This chapter describes each built-in. The built-ins are presented in alphabetical order by name. Each built-in definition consists of the following subsections: syntax, description (the effect of the built-in), examples (one or more examples of the built-in usage and results) and restrictions (any restrictions in the use of the built-in).

Arguments to built-ins are effectively passed by value, that is, no alteration of the arguments is done.