rowcolor too large when removing space on rows

Question

I am a LaTeX beginner and facing an issue that I can't seem to find the answer for... I am creating a table (using booktabs but my issue also occurs when not using the package), and whenever I remove the space on the edges of the table (with @{}) and try to colour individual rows at the same time, the space taken by the colour is wider than the table. See the following example:

\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage[table,xcdraw]{xcolor}
% [...]
\fbox{\begin{tabular}{@{}ll@{}}
foo & bar\
\rowcolor[HTML]{BFBFBF} bar & foo
\end{tabular}}

Which results in the following:

Thanks in advance for any help/pointer!

Related: colortbl: \rowcolor in tables with \begin{tabular}{@{}ccc@{}} — leandriis, Mar 18 '21 at 15:46
@leandriis the thread you linked pointed me in the right direction, thank you. I started playing with \tabcolsep. The solution i found is to prepend >{\columncolor{white}[\tabcolsep][0pt]} to my first column and >{\columncolor{white}[0pt][\tabcolsep]} to my last column. I am aware it's a dirty hack but it seems to do the job (and my PhD thesis is due in a few weeks). If anybody wants to answer this to my question I'll accept it! — Laura, Mar 18 '21 at 16:52

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 18 '21 at 15:45

5

You could use NiceTabular from the nicematrix package instead:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[table,xcdraw]{xcolor}
\definecolor{mygray}{HTML}{BFBFBF}
\usepackage{nicematrix}
\begin{document}
\fbox{\begin{NiceTabular}{@{}ll@{}}[code-before=\rowcolor{mygray}{2}]
foo & bar\
 bar & foo
\end{NiceTabular}}
\end{document}

answered Mar 18 '21 at 15:45

leandriis

62,593

1

Remark: It's not mandatory to define a color mygray. It's possible to write code-before = \rowcolor[HTML]{BFBFBF}{2}. – F. Pantigny Mar 19 '21 at 17:45

Bernard · Answer 2 · 2021-03-18T23:54:36.313

I suggest setting \fboxsep to $0$ instead, and keeping the spaces at both ends of the table, loading cellspace for the vertical spacing at the top and bottom of the table:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage[table,xcdraw]{xcolor}
\usepackage{cellspace}
\setlength{\cellspacetoplimit}{4pt}
\setlength{\cellspacebottomlimit}{4pt}
% [...]
\begin{document}
{\setlength{\fboxsep}{0pt}
\fbox{%
\begin{tabular}{Sll}
foo & bar\
\rowcolor[HTML]{BFBFBF} bar & foo
\end{tabular}}
}
\end{document}

rowcolor too large when removing space on rows

2 Answers2