Tables in Markdown

Markdown files can contain tables to structure data.

Table syntax

Markdown tables are written ("drawn") using the characters pipe |, dash - and colon :.

A simple table looks like this:

| This   | is    | a       |
| ---    | ---   | ---     |
| simple | table | example |

The table columns do not have to align in the un-rendered text, but it improves readability to keep everything aligned in the un-rendered form as well.

Some editors automatically align the table structure.

The first line of a table forms the head of the table. It is separated from the rest of the data by a line of dashes.

| Name   | Comment                                                                 |
|:-------|:------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Alice  | Always involved in various communications                               |
| Bob    | A good guy, who likes to communicate with Alice                         |
| Malroy | Not so nice guy. Tries to mess with the communication of Alice and Bob. |

The line following the head may contain formatting help to the renderer.

The location of the colon : (if any) modifies how the table is rendered.

If the colon is to the left of the line of dashes separating data from the header, then the data is rendered left-aligned.

For example

| Left oriented rendering |
|:------------------------|
| 150.0                   |
| or text                 |

renders as

Whereas:

| Right oriented rendering |
|-------------------------:|
| 150.0                    |
| or text                  |

is rendered as

If the rendering hint is placed on both sides of the dashed line, the data is rendered as centered:

| Centered rendering |
|:------------------:|
| 150.0              |
| or text            |

Is rendered as:

Providing no rendering hint leaves it up to the renderer to decide how to render the data. Left-aligned is a common default.

| Un-hinted rendering |
|---------------------|
| 150.0               |
| or text             |

Is rendered as:

Table variations

Some renderers allow you to omit the delimiting pipe symbols | at the side of the table:

This   | is    | a
---    | ---   | ---
simple | table | example

is rendered as

This is even considered an error by some editors.

However, for readability reasons we propose to use the delimited form within Codeberg.