Record
Record can be defined as a collection of fields. One or more fields together form a Record. The Records may be of fixed or variable length. For example , Employee ID , Name , Grade and Salary together form one record.
- Physical Record – The collection of information that exists on the external device is called Physical Record or Block. During input or output operations , this information is handled by the system as a unit.
- Logical Record – Physical Records are not handled by the COBOL program directly. Instead , it processes Logical Records. Logical Records are nothing but sequences of pieces of information that a COBOL program can process. Logical Records can correspond to complete Physical Records or only to a part of the Physical Record. Also it can correspond to a part or all of one or more Physical Records. The COBOL programs can handle only one particular record at any point of time.
File Handling in COBOL
File Handling is an important feature in COBOL Language. Only structured data in the form of files are handled. Files consist of Records and Fields, which contain information.
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