Why should you use table-driven Examples instead of hardcoding multiple scenarios?

Copy-pasting a scenario multiple times with slightly different literal values works, but it multiplies maintenance cost: any change to the underlying steps (a renamed field, an extra header, a different assertion) has to be applied identically across every duplicated copy, and it's easy for copies to silently drift apart over time as edits are made inconsistently.

A Scenario Outline with an Examples table keeps the actual test logic defined exactly once; adding, removing, or changing an input case is a one-line change to the table rather than a copy-paste-and-edit of an entire scenario block. It also makes the intent of the test data clearer at a glance, since the table format visually groups related inputs and expected outcomes together in a way that repeated full scenario blocks don't.

The tradeoff worth being aware of is readability at scale: a table with dozens of rows and many columns can become harder to scan than a smaller number of well-named individual scenarios, so table-driven Examples work best when the underlying logic really is identical across cases and only the input values differ, not when each case actually needs meaningfully different steps or assertions.