Control Table
Control tables are tables that control the control flow or play a major part in program control. There are no rigid rules about the structure or content of a control table—its qualifying attribute is its ability to direct control flow in some way through "execution" by a processor or interpreter. The design of such tables is sometimes referred to as table-driven design (although this typically refers to generating code automatically from external tables rather than direct run-time tables). In some cases, control tables can be specific implementations of finite-state-machine-based automata-based programming. If there are several hierarchical levels of control table they may behave in a manner equivalent to UML state machines
Control tables often have the equivalent of conditional expressions or function references embedded in them, usually implied by their relative column position in the association list. Control tables reduce the need for programming similar structures or program statements over and over again. The two-dimensional nature of most tables makes them easier to view and update than the one-dimensional nature of program code. In some cases, non-programmers can be assigned to maintain the control tables.
Read more about Control Table: Typical Usage, More Advanced Usage, Table Structure, Table Location, The Interpreter and Subroutines, Performance Considerations, Examples of Control Tables, Programming Paradigm, Analogy To Bytecode / Virtual Machine Instruction Set, Instruction Fetch, Monitoring Control Table Execution, Advantages, Disadvantages, Quotations, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words control and/or table:
“Above and beyond paying attention to feelings before and after a separation, never threaten your child with leaving or loss of love in an effort to control her behavior. Children believe their parents’ assertions that “I will send you away,” “I won’t love you any more,” “I’ll go away,” and are terrified with good reason. Fear is a very poor way of disciplining a child, and it can cause severe lifelong anxiety.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)