Question

Describe the way that you use a temporary file in a program that deletes a record from a sequential file.

Short answer

#Question# Explain how to use a temporary file while deleting a record from a sequential file in a program, including the step-by-step process to do so.

Step-by-step solution

Understand the problem

We want to delete a record from a sequential file. A sequential file is a file that stores data in a sequence, one after the other. In a programming context, we'll assume that a record is a line (or row) of data in the file.

Create a temporary file

To delete a record from a sequential file, we will create a temporary file that will store all the records except the one we want to delete. We will then overwrite the original sequential file with the data in the temporary file.

Read the sequential file and write to the temporary file

In the program, read the sequential file line by line. For each record (line), check if it matches the record to be deleted. If it doesn't match, write the record to the temporary file. If it matches, skip writing that line to the temporary file.

Close the files

Close both the sequential file and the temporary file. This will ensure that any changes made to the files during the process are saved.

Rename the temporary file

Rename the temporary file to have the same name as the sequential file. This will essentially replace the original sequential file with the temporary file, which now has all the records except the one that was deleted.

Clean up

Delete the original sequential file if it's still present (some operating systems might require this step), and close the program. By following these steps, you have successfully demonstrated how to use a temporary file to delete a record in a sequential file.