stepcounter and tabular environment

Question

I am trying to generate a numbered table. I used the answer here, which put @{\stepcounter{rowcount}} into the first line of the tabular.

However, this seems to break when I try to use the booktabs package, or even the plain tabular format. I suspect the problem is because \stepcounter is fragile, but I don't know how to solve the problem.

I'd also like to make the first row a header, without a number.

Here is the MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\newcounter{rowcounter}
\setcounter{rowcounter}{0}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{\stepcounter{rowcounter}\arabic{rowcounter}}ll} 
header row & text0\\ 
first row & text1\\
second row & text1\\
third row & text2

\end{tabular}
\end{document}

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 19 '17 at 12:29

9

In preamble you need add array package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array,  % <-- added
            booktabs}
\newcounter{rowcounter}
\setcounter{rowcounter}{0}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{\stepcounter{rowcounter}\arabic{rowcounter}\ }ll}
header row & text0\\
first row & text1\\
second row & text1\\
third row & text2
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

answered Jan 19 '17 at 12:29

Zarko

296,517

array is a good thing but it's not strictly needed here:-) – David Carlisle Jan 19 '17 at 13:02
i see now in your answer. good to know :) – Zarko Jan 19 '17 at 13:08
preferred the answer of @David because didn't require array – Tim Jan 19 '17 at 13:43
@Tim I'll take the points, thanks:-) but you should use the array package almost always anyway. If we were doing it now we would have made that the default implementation of tabular, just not enough bytes available back in 1993. – David Carlisle Jan 19 '17 at 15:09

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 19 '17 at 13:01

7

If you don't use array you need to \protect the commands

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\newcounter{rowcounter}
\setcounter{rowcounter}{0}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{\protect\stepcounter{rowcounter}\protect\arabic{rowcounter} }ll} 
header row & text0\\ 
first row & text1\\
second row & text1\\
third row & text2

\end{tabular}
\end{document}

If you want to start at 0 then you could either initialise to -1 instead of 0 or in the @{} use the counter before you increment it rather than after.

answered Jan 19 '17 at 13:01

David Carlisle

757,742

Can you modify this to show how to make header row? I don't want the header row with 0, I want no number at all. Is having an if/then clause the best way? I tried having 2 tabular environments—one with header, the other with data— but can't get them aligned. And this may be an inefficient way to do it. – Tim Jan 22 '17 at 09:27
1

@Tim just use \multicoloumn{1}{@{}c}{header row} and that cell will not get the @{} from the preamble. – David Carlisle Jan 22 '17 at 09:52
yes it worked fine. – Tim Jan 22 '17 at 10:21

stepcounter and tabular environment

2 Answers2