Editing Record (computer science) (section)

==Terminology==

In the context of storage such as in a [[database]] or [[spreadsheet]] a record is often called a ''[[row (database)|row]]'' and each field is called a [[column (database)|column]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Computer Science Dictionary Definitions|url=http://www.computingstudents.com/dictionary/?word=Record|website=Computing Students|access-date=Jan 22, 2018}}</ref><ref name="Radványi">{{cite book |last1=Radványi |first1=Tibor |title=Database Management Systems |date=2014 |publisher=Eszterházy Károly College |page=19 |url=https://www.tankonyvtar.hu/en/tartalom/tamop412A/2011-0038_49_radvanyi_en/index.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180923085530/https://www.tankonyvtar.hu/en/tartalom/tamop412A/2011-0038_49_radvanyi_en/index.html |archive-date=2018-09-23 |access-date=23 September 2018}}</ref><ref name="Kahate">{{cite book |last1=Kahate |first1=Atul |title=Introduction to Database Management Systems |date=2006 |publisher=Pearson |isbn=978-81-317-0078-5 |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mxYESolfLfoC |access-date=23 September 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Connolly |first1=Thomas |title=Database Solutions: A Step by Step Guide to Building Databases |url=https://archive.org/details/databasesolution00conn_535 |url-access=registration |date=2004 |publisher=Pearson |isbn=978-0-321-17350-8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/databasesolution00conn_535/page/n19 7] |edition=2nd }}</ref>

In [[object-oriented programming]], an [[Object (computer science)|object]] is a record that contains state and method fields.

A record is similar to a [[mathematics|mathematical]] [[tuple]], although a [[tuple]] may or may not be considered a record, and vice versa, depending on conventions and the programming language. In the same vein, a record type can be viewed as the computer language analog of the [[Cartesian product]] of two or more [[set (mathematics)|mathematical sets]], or the implementation of an abstract [[product type]] in a specific language.

A record differs from an [[Array data type|array]] in that a record's elements (fields) are determined by the definition of the record, and may be heterogeneous whereas an array is a collection of elements with the same type.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Pape |first1=Tobias |last2=Kirilichev |first2=Vasily |last3=Bolz |first3=Carl Friedrich |last4=Hirschfeld |first4=Robert |date=2017-01-13 |title=Record data structures in racket: usage analysis and optimization |url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3040575.3040578 |journal=ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review |language=en |volume=16 |issue=4 |pages=25–37 |doi=10.1145/3040575.3040578 |s2cid=14306162 |issn=1559-6915|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The parameters of a [[Function (computer programming)|function]] can be viewed collectively as the fields of a record and passing arguments to the function can be viewed as [[Assignment (computer science)|assigning]] the input parameters to the record fields. At a low-level, a function call includes an ''activation record'' or ''call frame'', that contains the parameters as well as other fields such as local variables and the return address.