an operation that determines whether one or more of a set of items has a specified property; search
they wrote a program to do a table lookup
Microsoft Computer Dictionary
n. A function, often built into spreadsheet programs, in which a previously constructed table of values called a lookup table is searched for a desired item of information. A lookup table consists of rows and columns of data. A lookup function examines the table either horizontally or vertically and then retrieves the data that corresponds to the argument specified as part of the lookup function.