§16.9. 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:
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:
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".
We start out by giving ourselves a capacious recording device:
And most of what follows is attaching sounds to various events. (We could have made noises associated with all the actions, but for simplicity we stuck to a few.) The thing to note here is that the recording happens as part of Carry out, not as part of Report, so sounds will be recorded even when they are the result of non-player action when the player is not even in the room.
Now we're at liberty to record evidence of the ghost getting out of the cupboard and getting back in, while we ourselves stand about on the lawn. |
|
We start out by giving ourselves a capacious recording device:
And most of what follows is attaching sounds to various events. (We could have made noises associated with all the actions, but for simplicity we stuck to a few.) The thing to note here is that the recording happens as part of Carry out, not as part of Report, so sounds will be recorded even when they are the result of non-player action when the player is not even in the room.
Now we're at liberty to record evidence of the ghost getting out of the cupboard and getting back in, while we ourselves stand about on the lawn. We start out by giving ourselves a capacious recording device:
And most of what follows is attaching sounds to various events. (We could have made noises associated with all the actions, but for simplicity we stuck to a few.) The thing to note here is that the recording happens as part of Carry out, not as part of Report, so sounds will be recorded even when they are the result of non-player action when the player is not even in the room.
Now we're at liberty to record evidence of the ghost getting out of the cupboard and getting back in, while we ourselves stand about on the lawn. |