table
Description
table is a table operator that does not perform any semantic function (it is a "no-op"), but exists for syntactic reasons in order to prevent the mis-interpretation of other table operators as cell content.
Usage examples
To show why this is needed, consider the following source code:
| A = | text | person | |
|---|---|---|---|
| pa | 1sg | ||
| na | 2sg | ||
| i | 3sg | ||
| join: | person | eng | |
| 1sg | I | ||
| 2sg | you | ||
| 3sg | he/she/it |
The programmer is trying to join the second table to the first. However, join: doesn't get interpreted by the parser as a operator, it gets interpreted as text in the text field above.
Remember, blank lines in Gramble aren't meaningful, they're just ignored. Everything below text here will be interpreted as text until the enclosure of A is actually broken by an operator under A. And join: is perfectly valid text, there's nothing wrong with text ending in ':'. (That is to say, being-an-operator and not-being-an-operator are primarily structural, not based on whether a string ends in ':'.)
For join: to be interpreted as an operator here, it needs to be under another operator, not under a header like text. That's what table: is for; it does not do anything semantically, but fills the syntactic role of the first operator in a chain of sibling operators.
| A = | table: | text | person |
|---|---|---|---|
| pa | 1sg | ||
| na | 2sg | ||
| i | 3sg | ||
| join: | person | eng | |
| 1sg | I | ||
| 2sg | you | ||
| 3sg | he/she/it |
An alternative
For convenience, all table operators like join, replace, etc. can also serve as the direct siblings of assignments, with the same semantics as the above. (That is to say, rather than table: be the first operator in a chain of sibling operators, the assignment can be.)
| A = | text | person |
|---|---|---|
| pa | 1sg | |
| na | 2sg | |
| i | 3sg | |
| join: | person | eng |
| 1sg | I | |
| 2sg | you | |
| 3sg | he/she/it |
Some programmers prefer this style (because it conserves horizontal space), other programmers prefer the style with table: because they find it visually clearer when assignments and operators are in separate columns.