github markdown colspan

Question

Is there a way to have 'colspan' on github markdown?

I'm trying to create a table where one row takes up four columns.

| One     | Two        | Three   | Four          | 
| ------------- |-------------| ---------| ------------- |
| One                | Two               | Three          | Four                |

| One     | Two        | Three   | Four          | 
| ------------- |-------------| ---------| ------------- |
| Span Across ||||

You can see a live preview by pasting the above here http://markdown-here.com/livedemo.html

Sorry to inform you, Markdown does not support colspan or rowspan. — mambrow, May 09 '14 at 18:46
[MultiMarkdown 4 supports colspan](http://fletcher.github.io/MultiMarkdown-4/tables), but it's not used on GitHub — fregante, Aug 19 '14 at 17:53
Textile does both colspan and rowspan with a [consistent syntax](https://txstyle.org/doc/15/tables). — Cees Timmerman, Jul 23 '18 at 14:24

score 117 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 15 '23 at 14:48

117

You can use HTML tables on GitHub (but not on StackOverflow)

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>One</td>
    <td>Two</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td colspan="2">Three</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Becomes

HTML table output

edited Apr 15 '23 at 14:48

Benjamin Loison

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answered Aug 19 '14 at 18:08

fregante

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sherdim · Answer 2 · 2022-06-01T12:15:48.927

82

Compromise minimum solution:

| One    | Two | Three | Four    | Five  | Six 
| -
| Span <td colspan=3>triple  <td colspan=2>double

So you can omit closing </td> for speed, оr can leave for consistency.

Result from http://markdown-here.com/livedemo.html :

Works in Jupyter Markdown.

Update:

As of 2019 year all pipes in the second line are compulsory in Jupyter Markdown.

| One    | Two | Three | Four    | Five  | Six
|-|-|-|-|-|-
| Span <td colspan=3>triple  <td colspan=2>double

minimally (does not work at Jupyter Lab):

One    | Two | Three | Four    | Five  | Six
-|||||-
Span <td colspan=3>triple  <td colspan=2>double

edited Jun 01 '22 at 12:15

answered Feb 07 '17 at 13:25

sherdim

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I got an issue with this solution if I try to use a colspan over the first column, a hack to avoid that in turn would be to add another first column that has no content... Yuck... – consideRatio Aug 07 '17 at 00:34
50

This does not work on GitHub, CommonMark nor StackOverflow – fregante Apr 20 '18 at 06:39
7

As of writing, this works on GitHub wikis. However, GH doesn't know you've added extra columns, so it adds blank cells on the right. – cxw Nov 10 '18 at 01:46
I understood that Pipes are ether optional at the beginning and the end, or none of them. Maybe should you add one at the end of this lines? – Sandburg Mar 22 '19 at 13:36
How to make it works also for table header (it has two rows as header, where the first row has spanned column)? I have tried in Jupyter Notebook and it does not work. – dudung May 31 '22 at 04:12
I believe that the syntax supports the single row header, and does not supports thead and tbody tags as you want, I suppose. You can check in sources of markdown parser. Anyway this is not a speedy syntax anymore. Try emdebbed tables in header string (can omit the first ): One |
Two upper
Two lower
| Three tall |
Four upper
Four lower
| Five | Six -|-|-|-|-|- Span triple double – sherdim Jun 01 '22 at 12:12

score 22 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 23 '19 at 03:38

22

There is no way to do so. Either use an HTML table, or put the same text on several cells.

like this:

| Can Reorder | 2nd operation |2nd operation |2nd operation |
| :---: | --- |
|1st operation|Normal Load <br/>Normal Store| Volatile Load <br/>MonitorEnter|Volatile Store<br/> MonitorExit|
|Normal Load <br/> Normal Store| | | No|
|Volatile Load <br/> MonitorEnter| No|No|No|
|Volatile store <br/> MonitorExit| | No|No|

which looks like

edited Jan 23 '19 at 03:38

3ocene

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answered Dec 03 '15 at 09:05

landerlyoung

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use || for two column span use ||| for three column span and so on so forth – Abhilash Reddy May 06 '20 at 05:41

score 17 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 10 '16 at 12:16

17

I recently needed to do the same thing, and was pleased that the colspan worked fine with consecutive pipes ||

Tested on v4.5 (latest on macports) and the v5.4 (latest on homebrew). Not sure why it doesn't work on the live preview site you provide.

A simple test that I started with was:

| Header ||
|--------------|
| 0 | 1 |

using the command:

multimarkdown -t html test.md > test.html

answered Oct 10 '16 at 12:16

Mark

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42

That's not supported on github – GnP Oct 11 '16 at 17:27
3

Looks like a nice markup, I'd like to see it pick up adoption. – akauppi Dec 02 '16 at 16:53

score -12 · Answer 5 · edited Jul 04 '19 at 09:33

-12

Adding break resolves your issue. You can store more than a record in a cell as markdown doesn't support much features.

edited Jul 04 '19 at 09:33

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answered Jul 04 '19 at 07:41

ELAVARASI P.S

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It's unclear what you mean by "Adding break". Could you illustrate? – ivan_pozdeev Jul 06 '19 at 03:38
3

What is a `break` in MarkDown? – Sohail Si Oct 25 '19 at 11:51
2

I am inclined to assume that they meant "line" break, so `
` - which would kind of help to emulate a `rowspan`-like behavior (not `colspan`). In the "spanned" cells, you would do nothing, while on the granular, "unspanned" cells, you add line breaks to produce a multi-row effect. Not a terrible idea, just poor explanation if that was the case. – gyohza Feb 02 '22 at 19:05

github markdown colspan

5 Answers5

Update:

Linked