Meaning – The term random access, refers to a computeri?s process of reading data from and writing data to storage in a nonsequential manner.
In data structures, direct access implies the ability to access any entry in a list in constant time. Very few data structures can make this guarantee other than arrays. Direct access is required, or at least valuable, in many algorithms such as binary search, integer sorting, or certain versions of sieve of Eratosthenes.
Example of usage – “Data might be stored notionally in a single sequence like a row, in two dimensions like rows and columns on a surface, or in multiple dimensions. However, given all the coordinates, a program can access each record about as quickly and easily as any other. In this sense, the choice of datum is arbitrary in the sense that no matter which item is sought, all that is needed to find it is its address, i.e. the coordinates at which it is located, such as its row and column.”
