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 (text)   Symbol (text)   Atomic number (a number)   Atomic weight (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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