PL1TAX Overview

PL1TAX is a psuedo programing language. Actually, PL1TAX is a pre-processor, that translates PL1TAX source statements into proper PL/1 language statements. This translation process is transparent to the user. Thus the user need only understend the PL1TAX language to use it.

PL1TAX functional capabilities:

• General Processing
  • PL1TAX reads one record at a time.
  • Each record is processed one at a time.
  • Each record is subject to user processing (if supplied).
  • Each record is then passsed to each table and each report for processing.
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• Cross-tabluations tables
  • These are tables produced consisting of 1, 2, or 3 nested stub variables, and 0 or 1 spread variables. The stub and spread variables may consist of individual values, or grouped values.
  • Table cells may consist of counts or accumulations.
  • Table contents are subject to user supplied constraints.
  • Stub and spread totals are generated automatically.
  • Stub row subtotals are generated automatically for multiple stubs.
  • Percents by Grand total, row total, and column total may be generated.
  • Stub and spread values may be replaced by user defined labels.
  • Titles and footnotes are generated by user specification.
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• Report listings
  • Reports consist of a list of variables and literals.
  • Sort and control break conditions may be specified.
  • Titles are generated by user specification.
  • Reports contents are subject to user supplied constraints.
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• Instruction processing.
  • Record variables may be processed by arithmetic and string operations.
  • Logical if-elseif-else-endif processing is availiable.
  • Sets of variables may be printed and/or written to data files.
  • The SELECT statement is used to filter records for subsequent processing.
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• Variable definition.
  • Variables may be defined as part of the input record.
  • Variables may be defined as part of working storage.
  • Variables may be defined as functions of other variables.
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• Functions
  • Lookup functions may be defined by the user.