Editing Flat-file database (section)

=== Fixed-width formats ===

With fixed-width formats, each field has a fixed length with extra [[space character|spaces]] added as needed. The fixed lengths can be predefined and known ahead of time (i.e. stated in the format's specification), or parsed from a [[Header (computing)|header]].

With predefined lengths, fields are limited to a maximum length. The need for longer fields may appear sometime after the format is defined. Possible workarounds include abbreviating phrases, replacing values with links (e.g. a URI pointing to the value), and splitting a file into multiple files.

With delimiter-separated formats, determining the field boundaries requires finding the delimiters, which incurs some [[computational overhead]]. This is not needed for fixed-width formats. However, fixed-width formats can lead to unnecessarily large file sizes if fields tend to be shorter than the lengths reserved for them.