Storage record

{{Short description|Term used in computer science for a group of related data treated as a meaningful unit}}

In computer science, a '''storage record''' is: * A group of related data, words, or fields treated as a meaningful unit; for instance, a Name, Address, and Telephone Number can be a "Personal Record". * A self-contained collection of information about a single object; a record is made up of a number of distinct items, called fields.

In record-oriented filesystems, a ''record'' is a basic unit of device-to-program data transfers. "A storage record is the direct result of transforming a logical record to an actual storage format."<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Ghosh |editor1-first=Sakti P. | display-editors = etal |title=Foundations of Data Organization |date=1985 |publisher=Plenum Press |isbn=978-1-4613-1881-1 |page=378 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Foundations_of_Data_Organization/HnHgBwAAQBAJ | author1-last = Maciaszek | author1-first = L.A. |access-date=November 6, 2025}}</ref> Files in record-oriented filesystems are structured collections of records. Records may have a fixed length or variable length.

In Unix-like systems, a number of programs (for example, awk, join, and sort) are designed to process data consisting of records (called lines) each separated by newlines, where each record may contain a number of fields separated by spaces, commas, or some other character.

==References== {{Reflist}}

Category:Computer data storage