Tabliczkatype

Tabliczkatype is a term used in some Polish-language programming contexts to denote a data type whose instances represent a compact tabular data structure, essentially a fixed-size lookup table. The name blends tabliczka, meaning a small table or card, with type, signaling a data type designed to store a small collection of entries that can be accessed by index or by key. The concept is encountered primarily in tutorials and documentation aiming to describe efficient, compact representations for simple mappings.

In terms of structure, a tabliczkatype is typically implemented as an array of records where each record contains a key and a value. Some variants store only values or use inline encodings for space efficiency. The size is fixed at initialization time, and the ordering of entries may be defined and preserved. Lookups can be implemented as a direct index, a small linear scan, or a simple search over a known small set, with performance goals focused on predictability and low memory overhead. The design emphasizes minimal runtime overhead, making it suitable for performance-sensitive or memory-constrained environments.

Common use cases include encoding tables, locale or code mappings, and small dictionaries in embedded systems or resource-limited software. A tabliczkatype is often declared as a struct or class containing a private, fixed-size array and methods for retrieval, iteration, and sometimes serialization. Immutability is a common design choice to improve safety and optimize caching, though mutable variants exist in some implementations. Limitations include fixed capacity and lack of dynamic growth, which requires rebuilding the table to accommodate new entries.

Example applications might map two-letter codes to full names (PL -> Poland, US -> United States). See also lookup table, constant table, and mapping structures.