I am ashamed to ask such a trivial question but all the direct access files I have prepared and to which I have written have had occupied records. I am inclined to prepare one which will have only a few occupied records but whose records will be indexed by the ID's of a much larger collection. So there will be a lot of empty records never created or read. My question is "Will there be a lot of wasted space in the file?" Is there a grid of records for which space is set aside willy-nilly? Or is the method of their creation more ingenious so that space in the file is assigned as records are written?
I began with a search of your database in the hope of saving myself the embarrassment of asking. But I did not succeed in finding someone else with a similar query. I can, of course, be more creative with indexing of my own - but this is the simplest way if it does not have wasteful side effects.
