Date   : Mon, 22 May 1989 14:24:25 EDT
From   : John C Klensin <KLENSIN@INFOODS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Digital Research 'PL/I' and PL/M

Tom Williams writes:
>   Digital Research used to market PL/I for both CP/M and MS-DOS. I'm not sure
>if they are still available. You'd still have to make a translation, PL/I and
>PL/M aren't as much alike as you might think.

Digital Research is still marketing what they describe as PL/I, or at
least it keeps showing up in Ads and mailings from them.  However...
  (1) They reduced the staff of their language group to zero or nearly 
zero some years ago, and announced that most of their language products 
(including the CP/M and MS-DOS versions of "PL/I") were "mature" and 
would basically no longer be maintained.  As far as I know, this 
situation and policy is still in effect.  These compilers are bug- and 
mis-feature laden, and you don't even get someone to sympathize when you 
encounter their special characteristics.
  (2) PL/M is very similar to PL/I in several respects, but not enough 
to make translation a worthwhile enterprise in most cases.
  (3) What Digital Research sells as PL/I is not, and has never been, 
PL/I as understood by anyone else.  The strange restrictions...  Now, 
those things that make it "not PL/I" might conceivably make it easier to 
get back and forth to PL/M: I don't know PL/M well enough to be
competent to judge. 

   Disclaimer:  The opinions above are personal ones, and represent 
neither the official views of MIT nor those of the PL/I Standards 
Committee, which I chair.