Chapter 15: Tables
15.9. Blank rows

There is no difficulty about entirely blank rows: or rather, the only difficulty is once again that they are boring to type out. We can avoid the necessity by appending "with ... blank rows" at the foot of the table:

Table 2 - Selected Elements
Element   Symbol   Atomic number   Atomic weight   
"Hydrogen"   "H"   1   a number   
"Iron"   "Fe"   26   --   
"Zinc"   "Zn"   30   --   
"Uranium"   "U"   92   --   
with 3 blank rows   

(These words cannot be placed in between rows, but only at the bottom.) And indeed the table can start out completely empty:

Table 3 - Undiscovered Periodic Table
Element   Symbol   Atomic number   Atomic weight   
text   text   a number   a number   
with 92 blank rows   

Blank rows are useful because they enable us to add new data to a table. In effect, they are invisible when not used. A repeat loop like

repeat through Table 3:
    ...

automatically skips blank rows, so it would initially do nothing at all. Similarly, choosing a "random" row will never choose a blank one.

A convenient way to test if a table contains non-blank rows is to use the built-in adjectives "empty" and "non-empty". So:

if the Undiscovered Periodic Table is empty, ...

tests whether all of its rows are blank; if even one cell contains a value then the table is "non-empty".


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* Example  If It Hadn't Been For...
A sound recording device that records the noises made by player and non-player actions, then plays them back on demand.

RB


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