15.9. Blank rows

| 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. |
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