Editing Record (computer science) (section)

===Self-defining records===
A ''self-defining record'' is a type of record which contains information to identify the record type and to locate information within the record.  It may contain the offsets of elements; the elements can therefore be stored in any order or may be omitted.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kraimer |first1=Martin R. |title=EPICS Input / Output Controller (IOC) Application Developer's Guide |url=http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/EpicsDocumentation/AppDevManuals/AppDevGuide/3.12BookFiles/AppDevGuide.book.html |website=Argonne National Laboratory |access-date=November 25, 2015 }}</ref> The information stored in a self-defining record can be interpreted as [[metadata]] for the record, which is similar to what one would expect to find in the [[Unix|UNIX]] [[metadata]] regarding a file, containing information such as the record's creation time and the size of the record in [[byte]]s. Alternatively, various elements of the record, each including an element identifier, can simply follow one another in any order.