computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

{{citation needed, date=July 2016, 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

IBM mainframes IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, IBM dominated the large computer market. Current mainframe computers in IBM's line of business computers are developments of the basic design of th ...

, a ''record'' is a basic unit of device-to-program data transfers. Mainframe files, properly called data sets, are traditionally structured collections of records, as opposed to modern

byte stream A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits. A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...

access files. Records may have a fixed length or variable length. In

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

systems, a number of programs (for example,

awk AWK (''awk'') is a domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. Like sed and grep, it is a filter, and is a standard feature of most Unix-like operating systems. The AWK lang ...

join Join may refer to: * Join (law), to include additional counts or additional defendants on an indictment *In mathematics: ** Join (mathematics), a least upper bound of sets orders in lattice theory ** Join (topology), an operation combining two top ...

, and sort) are designed to process data consisting of records (called

lines Line most often refers to: * Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity * Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to: Arts ...

) each separated by newlines, where each record may contain a number of fields separated by spaces, commas, or some other character.

See also