coloring entire row of tabular*

Question

I would like to have the first row of all my tables colored with a certain color (below yellow) but somehow below thing is not working as expected

This:

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{report}
\usepackage{colortbl}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular*}{0.90\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}ll}
\rowcolor{yellow}
OS & Features \\ \hline
iOS & blah blah.\\
Android & blah blah.\\
\end{tabular*}

\end{document}

Results in this:

enter image description here

Which is undesired because of the blank space between OS and Features Additionally I would like to make the hline a bit wider so it matches the width of the yellow area, or make the yellow area a bit narrower so it matches the horizontal line. How can i do this?

Any help is high appreciated.

You could do \begin{tabularx}{0.90\textwidth}{lXl} with an empty second column. — Qrrbrbirlbel, Jan 07 '13 at 04:35
with an empty second column : I would rather not use tricky things as much as possible since this kind of table will be used in several places :) — nacho4d, Jan 07 '13 at 04:48
Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’ by clicking on the tickmark below their vote count (see How do you accept an answer?). This shows which answer helped you most, and it assigns reputation points to the author of the answer (and to you!). It's part of this site's idea to identify good questions and answers through upvotes and acceptance of answers. — Qrrbrbirlbel, Sep 03 '13 at 17:54

score 25 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 09 '17 at 16:22

25

use package tabularx instead, it is a better choice than the star version of tabular

\documentclass[12pt]{report}
\usepackage{tabularx,colortbl}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabularx}{0.90\textwidth}{Xl}
\rowcolor{yellow}
OS      & Features \\ \hline
iOS     & blah blah.\\
Android & blah blah.\\
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}

enter image description here

edited Jun 09 '17 at 16:22

Moriambar

11,466

answered Jan 07 '13 at 08:23

This works across columns, but not so well across rows. It aligns well between \hline, but doesn't align well with \toprule or \bottomrule from the (very popular) booktabs package (there is some white space between the rules and the color). – PatrickT Mar 03 '24 at 13:49

score 15 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 05 '17 at 19:06

I do not know how to patch \rowcolor (and its children), but I provide a new \Rowcolor[<pad>]{<color>} macro:

<color> stands for the color used, and
<pad> for the padding before the first column (usual \tabcolsep, which is the default) This is the width of the stuff that is @{dded} before the first row.

A note on the latter sentence: You specified @{\extracolsep{\fill}}ll which removed the \tabcolsep before the first column. The original \rowcolor can’t handle that as well, see your picture, which is the reason you asked for making the rule longer when you have in fact said, that it should be shorter! (More on that: colortbl: \rowcolor in tables with \begin{tabular}{@{}ccc@{}})

If you use something like @{}<…>, you need to use \Rowcolor[]{<color>} (which is the same as \Rowcolor[0pt]{<color>}).

Code

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{report}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\newlength{\qrr@dimen@}
\expandafter\pretocmd\csname tabular*\endcsname{\setlength{\qrr@dimen@}{#1}}{}{}
\newcommand*{\Rowcolor}[2][\tabcolsep]{%
    \ifx\relax#1\relax\else
        \kern-\the\dimexpr#1\relax
    \fi
    \makebox[0pt][l]{%
        \fboxsep=0pt
        \colorbox{#2}{%
            \strut\kern\qrr@dimen@
        }%
    }%
    \ifx\relax#1\relax\else
        \kern\the\dimexpr#1\relax
    \fi
    \ignorespaces
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{tabular*}{.9\linewidth}{l@{\extracolsep{\fill}}l}
    \rowcolor{yellow} \multicolumn{1}{>{\columncolor{green}[\tabcolsep][\tabskip]}l}{OS} &  Features   \\ \hline
    \Rowcolor{yellow} OS &  Features   \\ \hline
    iOS                  &  blah blah. \\
    Android              &  blah blah. \\
\end{tabular*}
\end{document}

Output

enter image description here

so it does, sneaky (and of course bad style to assume a scratch register is safe not that there is any alternative here:-). I had a horrible feeling it might have been me that added that setting but it was Rainer so I might be forgiven for forgetting:-) 1998-05-13 Rainer Schoepf latex-bugs@latex-project.org

lttab.dtx Use \setlength to set size of p-column and for

argument of tabular* environment, so that the benefits of the calc package apply. Note this won't work if the first column is a p column as \dimen@ will then be the column width as noted in Rainer's change log — David Carlisle, Jan 07 '13 at 14:33
@DavidCarlisle Well, there is one alternative: I have updated my answer with an extra dimension. Anyway, I have never used used tabular* before; I think that the tabularx environment is superior too. — Qrrbrbirlbel, Jan 08 '13 at 22:17

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 16 '21 at 18:10

You can use {NiceTabular*} of nicematrix (and the key colortbl-like in order to specify the color of the row with the same syntax as colortbl). You have directly the expected output.

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{report}
\usepackage{nicematrix}
\begin{document}
\begin{NiceTabular}{0.90\textwidth}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}ll}[colortbl-like]
\rowcolor{yellow}
OS & Features \ \hline
iOS & blah blah.\
Android & blah blah.\
\end{NiceTabular}
\end{document}

You need several compilations (because nicematrix uses PGF/Tikz nodes).

coloring entire row of tabular*

3 Answers3

Code

Output

Linked