Using random access files

Abstract

The final section of this book gives you a start in the use of random, or direct, access files. The important feature that these files have that serial files do not is that any record in the file can be read from or written to directly and without reference to any other records in the file. Once the file has been opened we can access any record for reading or writing without any change in mode. To open a random file we have to use the instruction

$$ OPEN\,R,fn,FILENAME $$

where fn is the logical number of the file within that program. Each record on the file is allowed to be up to 28 bytes in length and each record can only contain string data.