Same here!
I notice a recent behaviour change, that probably happened with the latest ACF Pro update.
On WordPress instances where I used Repeater Fields with this type of code:
if( have_rows('acf_repeater_field') ):
while ( have_rows('acf_repeater_field') ) : the_row();
// OUTPUT
endwhile;
endif;
Until now, when no fields where present, there was no output.
What I see now: even when there are no fields, there’s an output – html markup is generated. If I dump the raw content of the acf_repeater_field, I see a NULL array.
So my quick fix is to surround the whole block of code with something like:
$acf_repeater_field = get_field('acf_repeater_field');
if ( !empty( $acf_repeater_field ) ) :
// ETC
endif;
Any explanation for this behavior? Is it indeed a change in ACF?
Edit : actually not at all the same issue, sorry for the noise.