while function is not working

I'm creating a while function for my simple uno game. I have created a function called play to give each player a turn to play a card, and each card played will be deducted from a matrix called Deck, then it will be replaced in a other matrix called Draw_Deck. The idea is if a card was played by either player, it will be placed in the Draw_Deck and deleted from the Deck, because eventually the cards that can be drawed from Deck will run out, then I want the program to start allowing players to draw drom Draw_Deck. my idea is to inclued the function (play) in a while loop:

while Deck(:,1:10) ~= " "
[p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck] = play(p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck);
end

note that the 11th column in the matrix includes the color card name that's why i didn't write:

while Deck(:,:) ~= " "
[p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck] = play(p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck);
end

which means i don't want the 11th column to be checked, because it will always have the colors names in it.

the only problem is when i run the code, it skips the line where the function should be runned and directly goes to the line after end!

i also tried with if:

if Deck(:,1:10) ~= " "
[p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck] = play(p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck);
end

it also does the same thing, skips running the function and goes to the line after end,

if any one can help solving this problem I'll be happy.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I'd just check the height of Deck - the deck that contains the remaining cards. If it has zero rows (it's empty), quit the loop

maxIterations = 53; % ALL while loops must have a failsafe - it's just good programming practice.
loopCounter = 1;
while ~isempty(Deck) && loopCounter < maxIterations
    [p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck] = play(p1,p2,floor,Draw_Deck,Deck);
    % Now Draw_Deck is one row taller, and Deck is one row shorter.
    % Eventually, when all rows have been deleted, Deck will be empty
    loopCounter = loopCounter + 1;
end

Note how I also used a failsafe. 90% of the while loop questions here (not yours though) are about infinite loops - a loop that never ends. That's because they didn't use a failsafe to prevent infinite loops. I added one to your code just to be safe and follow good programming practices.

[Waad Alameri]

Thsi would work, but the problem that Deck will never be empty. Column 11 has the colors names. Anyway thank you very much!

[Steven Lord]

Can you show us a couple sample rows (say the first three and the last three) in your Deck variable so we can see how you're representing your data?