Computers: Universe: Records

To recap: each record in a UniVerse file is made up of two parts: a record key, which uniquely identifies the record within the file, and record data, a string broken by field marks (character #254) into fields, which holds information about whatever the record represents.

For instance, in the case of a record on an application INVOICES file, the key chosen by the system designer would probably be the invoice number, while the fields would store the invoice date, amount, sales tax amount, product code and quantity.

Records are not necessarily the same length, and do not necessarily have the same number of fields. While many represent application data (such as the records in the INVOICES file mentioned above), many others are UniVerse Basic programs in a program file, or UniVerse command and keyword names, in the VOC file, and so on.