Program macros

Not all edit macros are written in CLIST or REXX. You can also write edit macros in a programming language such as PL/I, COBOL, FORTRAN, APL2®, Pascal, or C. These are called program macros.

There are four basic reasons to write and debug a program macro:

A macro runs faster in a language that can be precompiled than in CLIST or REXX. This can be valuable for macros that you run many times.
A macro that must read data containing symbols can confuse an interpretive language processor. Particularly, ampersands in the data can cause problems.
Complex logic can be handled better in a programming language.
To pass mixed data or strings (those that contain both EBCDIC and DBCS characters) as parameters, you must use a program macro. Although CLIST does not allow mixed data strings, these edit macro commands and assignment statements allow you to supply data or string operands:
```
  CHANGE     EXCLUDE      FIND
  LINE       LINE_AFTER   LINE_BEFORE
  MASKLINE   SEEK         TABSLINE
```