access mode

A technique that is used to obtain a particular logical record from, or to place a particular logical record into, a file assigned to a mass storage device. (A).
The manner in which files are referred to by a computer. Access can be sequential (records are referred to one after another in the order in which they appear on the file), access can be random (the individual records can be referred to in a nonsequential manner), or access can be dynamic (records can be accessed sequentially or randomly, depending on the form of the input/output request). IBM.
A particular form of access permitted to a file. X/Open.