Record (computer science)

In computer science, a record (also called struct or compound data) is a basic data structure. A record is a collection of fields, possibly of different data types, typically in fixed number and sequence . The fields of a record may also be called members, particularly in object-oriented programming. Fields may also be called elements, though these risk confusion with the elements of a collection. A tuple may or may not be considered a record, and vice versa, depending on conventions and the specific programming language.

For example, a date could be stored as a record containing a numeric year field, a month field represented as a string, and a numeric day-of-month field. A Personnel record might contain a name, a salary, and a rank. A Circle record might contain a center and a radius—in this instance, the center itself might be represented as a point record containing x and y coordinates.

Records are distinguished from arrays by the fact that their number of fields is typically fixed, each field has a name, and that each field may have a different type.

A record type is a data type that describes such values and variables. Most modern computer languages allow the programmer to define new record types. The definition includes specifying the data type of each field and an identifier (name or label) by which it can be accessed. In type theory, product types (with no field names) are generally preferred due to their simplicity, but proper record types are studied in languages such as System F-sub. Since type-theoretical records may contain first-class function-typed fields in addition to data, they can express many features of object-oriented programming.

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