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.