Under the MAXSTMT option, optimization will be turned off for any block that has more than the specified number of statements. Use the MAXSTMT option - with a reasonable limit to the number of statements - if you want the compiler to optimize the code generated for a program and are willing for the compiler to optimize only the reasonably sized blocks in that program.
>>-MAXSTMT--(size)---------------------------------------------><
When a large size is specified for MAXSTMT and some blocks have a large number of statements, compilation may be aborted if there is not enough virtual storage available.
The default for MAXSTMT is 4096.