March 18, 2010

Multirow and multicolumn spanning with latex tables

Dr. Andrew J. Page

The easiest way to do multirow and multicolumn spanning in latex is to use the package multirow. Just put
\usepackage{multirow} at the top of your latex file.

Above is a simple example of this in action.

\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|} \hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{Schedulers} \\ \hline
\multirow{3}{*}{Immediate} & RR & Round Robin \\
& EF & Earliest First \\
& LL & Lightest Loaded \\ \hline
\multirow{4}{*}{Batch} & MM & Min-Min \\
& MX & Max-Min \\
& DL & Dynamic Level \\
& RC & Relative Cost \\ \hline
\multirow{4}{*}{Evolutionary} & PN & This paper \\
& ZO & Genetic Algorithm\\
& TA & Tabu search~\cite{GLOV1986j}\\
& SA & Simlulated Annealing \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

The main things to note are, to span multiple columns in a latex table you just use \multicolumn followed by the number of columns to span and how you want it positioned, e.g. l for left, r for right, c for centered. Spanning multiple rows in a latex table is the same, except using \multirow followed by the number of rows to span, and how you would like it positioned. * basically means best fit. Remember that the first element of each row needs to be empty, since you have some piece of information spanning multiple rows.
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