Indirect addressing techniques in the design and implementation of an on-line file access program

This paper considers design criteria for generalized file access program and describes implementation of such a program using indirect addressing techniques in a higher level language. The implementation discussed is an on-line program to create and maintain herbarium records written in PL/I. The author shows that the indirect addressing techniques yield a concise, easily modifiable program which can be used on an arbitrary file by simply modifying initialization parameters.