One of the most frequent operations used on files is to search for a particular record.

Sequential access of records occurs when a number of records need to be successively read.

For example, if a file has records which are not sorted, then to find a particular record, that file would need to be searched from the beginning, reading each record in turn until the wanted record is found.

Sequential search of a file : To find a record in a file using a sequential search.

Sequential processing of all records in a file.