Record
<data, database, programming> An ordered set of fields, usually stored contiguously.
The term is used with similar meaning in several different contexts.
In a file, a "record" probably has some fixed length, in contrast to a "line" which may have any length and is terminated by some
End Of Line sequence).
A
database record is also called a "row".
In a
spreadsheet it is always called a "row".
Some programming languages use the term to mean a type composed of fields of several other types (
C calls this a "
struct").
In all these cases, a record represents an entity with certain field values.
Fields may be of a fixed width (
bits or characters) or they may be separated by a
delimiter character, often
comma (
CSV) or
HT (
TSV).
In a database the list of values of a given field from all records is called a column.
