Editing Record (computer science) (section)

===Representation in memory===
The representation of a record in memory varies depending on the programming language. Often, fields are stored in consecutive memory locations, in the same order as they are declared in the record type. This may result in two or more fields stored into the same word of memory; indeed, this feature is often used in [[systems programming]] to access specific bits of a word. On the other hand, most compilers will add padding fields, mostly invisible to the programmer, in order to comply with alignment constraints imposed by the machine—say, that a [[floating point]] field must occupy a single word.

Some languages may implement a record as an array of addresses pointing to the fields (and, possibly, to their names and/or types). Objects in object-oriented languages are often implemented in rather complicated ways, especially in languages that allow [[class inheritance|multiple class inheritance]].