Msg: 2818 *Conference*

06-28-92 13:27:34

From: DAVID FIRTH

To : MIKE NICHOLS

Subj: REPLY TO MSG #2814 (RANDOM FILES)

Mike, your solution to random file access is exactly what most high level
languages (i.e. Pascal) do. That approach works well, since you can easily find
a particular record via simple mathematics. However, if you use variant records
(multiple record types within one record-oriented file), you will have wasted
space -- the bytes used to pad the smaller record types will be unused. If your
database needs varying record sizes, you might try a linked list style format.
Linked lists require more code overhead, but are easily sorted without moving
blocks of memory around.