usually stored contiguously. The term is used with similar
meaning in several different contexts. In a file, a "record"
probably has some fixed length, in contrast to a "line" which
may have any length and is terminated by some
End Of Linesequence). A
database record is also called a "row". In a
spreadsheet it is always called a "row". Some programming
languages use the term to mean a type composed of fields of
several other types (
C calls this a "
struct").
In all these cases, a record represents an entity with certain
field values.
they may be separated by a
delimiter character, often
In a database the list of values of a given field from all
records is called a column.
(2002-03-22)