Table in Answers & Questions [duplicate]

Question

I want to use a table in my answer.
e.g

|-------------|----------------|
| ShortCut | Description |
|-------------|----------------|

I have posted an answer here, which requires this kind of formatting.

Is it possible to have such formatting in stackoverflow Questions & answers ?

• If yes, How ?
• If no, why ?

Edit : I tried to use following code directly in editor of SO. But it didn't work for me.

<table>
<tr>
<td>hello</td>
<td>hello2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>hello3</td>
<td>hello4</td>
</tr>
</table>

Answer 1

Standard Markdown should have allowed in-lined HTML table. However, seems it's not supported by SE's implementation of Markdown.

There are currently few Markdown implementation, which do support tables syntax originally created for PHP Markdown Extra.

Tables in above syntax have source like this:

| Left align | Right align | Center align |
|:-----------|------------:|:------------:|
| This       |        This |     This     |
| column     |      column |    column    |
| will       |        will |     will     |
| be         |          be |      be      |
| left       |       right |    center    |
| aligned    |     aligned |   aligned    |

And are rendered as HTML table, which looks like this:

Example table is from this Python implementation.

Answer 2

You can use Unicode characters. For example:

                   [My DataTabel]                                     
  ┌───────────┬───────────┼───────────┬───────────┐
  │  Field#1  │  Field#2  │    ∙∙∙    │  Field#n  │
  ├───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┤
  │ Data[1-1] │ Data[1-2] │    ∙∙∙    │ Data[1-n] │
  ├───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┤
  │ Data[2-1] │ Data[2-2] │    ∙∙∙    │ Data[2-n] │
  ├───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┤
  │    ∙∙∙    │    ∙∙∙    │    ∙∙∙    │    ∙∙∙    │
  ├───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┤ 
  │ Data[m-1] │ Data[m-2] │    ∙∙∙    │ Data[m-n] │ 
  └───────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────┘ 

Answer 3

I fail to see why a table is needed for that answer.

But if you want to create a table, your best bet is to use the one you've posted in code tags:

|-------------|----------------|
| ShortCut    | Description    |
|-------------|----------------|

This could also be extended with Unicode.

It does not support extended formatting, though.