Creating a Turtle and placing it in a patch that isnt Black and that doesnt have another turtle in place

Question

I am trying to create turtles and place them randomly along the patches but I cant place them if the patch color is black. Im honestly stuck and cant even think ... This is what I have.

create-mice N-mice
  [
    set shape "mouse side"
    set color 4
    setxy random-pxcor random-pycor
  ]
  
  ask turtles [
    while pcolor = black [
      setxy random-pxcor random-pycor
    ]
  ]

Its giving my an error saying "WHILE expected this input to be a TRUE/FALSE block, but got a TRUE/FALSE instead"

Answer 1

There's an internal reason for this (the difference between a boolean and a reporter that returns a boolean, or something like that) and it always tricks me too.

When you are doing while, the condition is in []. Note that when you are doing if, the condition is not in []! Try this:

ask turtles [
    while [pcolor = black] [               ; changed the [ ] on this line
      setxy random-pxcor random-pycor
    ]
  ]