Record structures (Cambridge International AS Computer Science)

Purpose of records

What is a record?

• A record is a composite data structure used to store a collection of related data items

• Each item can be of a different data type

• It allows a programmer to group related values under one identifier

• Records help create a more structured and readable approach to storing and managing data

• A record contains a fixed number of fields, each with its own name and type

• In pseudocode, a record can by declared as:

• Suppose we want to store information about a car

• We can define a record type like this:

• We can then create a variable of this type:

• And assign values to its fields:

• To read from the record we can:

Exam Hint

• Records in programming are a type of data structure used to group related data in your code
• These are not the same as records in a database, which refer to a complete set of fields on a single entity in a table (row)

Key features of records