| IBM DATA FORMAT | WHEN TO USE | WHEN NOT TO USE | PL/I ATTRIBUTES | STORAGE REQUIREMENTS | |
| CODED
ARITHMETIC DATA |
Packed decimal | Commercial applications | FIXED DEC | Two digits per byte plus sign | |
| Fixed Point | Commercial or scientific applications | For decimal fractions | FIXED BIN | halfword or fullword | |
| Floating Point | Scientific applications | When dollar or cents accuracy is needed | FLOAT DEC
FLOAT BIN |
Fullword, doubleword or two doublewords | |
| NUMERIC
CHARACTER DATA |
Zoned Decimal | In steam or record output for editing arithmetic data; in record I/O for describing data that are in character form but arithmetic in nature | Avoid, if possible use in computations. | PIC | One digit per byte |
| LOGICAL
DATA |
Character | Alphanumeric descriptions | Arithmetic operations | CHAR or PIC | One Character per byte |
| Bit | Program switches; Boolean operations. | Arithmetic operations | BIT | One Byte |