控制表是一个决定控制流程或是主要影响控制流程的表。关于控制表的结构或内容没有硬性的规定，其特点是其可以影响控制流程的能力。这类表格的设计有时称为「表格驱动设计」（不过后者多半是指由外部的表格自动生成代码，而不是在程序中的表格）。以有限状态机为基础的自动机编程有时会用控制表为其实现方式。若控制表有几个不同的层次，其行为就类似UML状态机。

控制表有时会以关联表的方式表示，其中会有对应的条件表达式及子进程。控制表可以简化一些类似的程序叙述，而且若是二维的控制表，在阅读及更新上都比一维特性的代码要容易维护，有时控制表甚至可以让非程序员来维护。计算机科学家高德纳在1974年提出的论文《Structured Programming with go to Statements》中就提到「多路分支是一种重要的编程技术，但常常被一些数量不足的if指令取代」。

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