Hi this is the HW question, i can't understand the avail_list part can anyone explain??
(1) Write a program to implement indexing with avail_list support for deleted records as follows:
a. The program maintains a data file called students.txt of students’ records which contains studentID and studentName. These records of fixed length and not sorted.
b. The program uses an index file called index.txt to speed up the search for students’ records. The index contains the studentID and the RRN number. Access to a record is via a binary search technique.
c. The program uses an avail_list to keep track of the slots of deleted records. Newly inserted records replace the deleted records, which are pointed to by the avail_list. If no items in the avail_list, the new record is added to the end of a students.txt file and the index is updated and resorted.