There were other languages that could have been considered but PL/I offered the most complete solution even though it had not been implemented. For the first few years of the Multics project, a subset of the language could be compiled to assembly language with the Early PL/I (EPL) compiler by Doug McIlory and Bob Morris from Bell Labs. EPL supported the project until a boot-strapping compiler for the full PL/I could be developed.
Other languages were considered for the Multics project, but PL/I offered the most comprehensive solution even though it was not yet fully implemented. The initial years of the project utilized a subset of PL/I that could be compiled to assembly language using the EPL compiler by Doug McIlory and Bob Morris from Bell Labs. This process continued until a full-fledged PL/I compiler was developed.