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DIRECT or RANDOM Access

In all the discussions of the I/O so far processing has been sequential i.e. it starts at the beginning of the file and goes on to the end (unless the user has done a REWIND or BACKSPACE). DIRECT access allows the user to process records in the file in any order. The READ or WRITE supply a record number and the OPEN statement has to declare that the access is DIRECT and also give a record size. Although simple to use, this method of access is beyond the scope of this introduction.



n west (APC)
2000-03-08