Tables

Markdig supports two kinds of tables: pipe tables (GitHub-style) and grid tables (Pandoc-style).

Pipe tables

Enable with .UsePipeTables() (included in UseAdvancedExtensions()).

Basic syntax

Columns are separated by |. A header row is separated from the body by a line of dashes:

| Name     | Language | Stars |
|----------|----------|-------|
| Markdig  | C#       | 4.5k  |
| cmark    | C        | 1.6k  |
| markdown-it | JavaScript | 18k |

Name	Language	Stars
Markdig	C#	4.5k
cmark	C	1.6k
markdown-it	JavaScript	18k

Column alignment

Use colons in the separator row to control alignment:

| Left   | Center  | Right  |
|:-------|:-------:|-------:|
| one    | two     | three  |
| four   | five    | six    |

Left	Center	Right
one	two	three
four	five	six

Optional leading/trailing pipes

The outer pipes are optional:

Name | Language
-----|--------
Markdig | C#
cmark | C

Name	Language
Markdig	C#
cmark	C

Inline formatting in cells

Cells support inline Markdown — emphasis, code, links, etc.:

| Feature       | Status        |
|---------------|---------------|
| **Bold**      | ~~removed~~   |
| `code`        | [link](#)     |

Feature	Status
Bold	~~removed~~
`code`	link

Escaped pipes

Use \| to include a literal pipe inside a cell:

| Expression   | Result |
|-------------|--------|
| `a \| b`    | a or b |

Options

UsePipeTables accepts a PipeTableOptions object:

var pipeline = new MarkdownPipelineBuilder()
    .UsePipeTables(new PipeTableOptions
    {
        UseHeaderForColumnCount = true // GFM-compatible column counting
    })
    .Build();

Option	Default	Description
`RequireHeaderSeparator`	`true`	Whether the dashed separator row is required. Set to `false` for Kramdown-style tables that allow headerless tables.
`UseHeaderForColumnCount`	`false`	When `true`, the header row's column count is authoritative — short rows are padded with empty cells and extra cells in wider rows are dropped. When `false`, the widest row determines the column count.
`InferColumnWidthsFromSeparator`	`false`	When `true`, populates `TableColumnDefinition.Width` based on the dash count of each column in the separator row, normalized to percentages that sum to 100. When `false`, `Width` stays `0` and no width information is emitted.

Inferring column widths from the separator

With InferColumnWidthsFromSeparator = true, the width of each column is proportional to the number of - characters under it in the separator row. This is useful when you want authors to control relative column widths directly in the Markdown source.

var pipeline = new MarkdownPipelineBuilder()
    .UsePipeTables(new PipeTableOptions { InferColumnWidthsFromSeparator = true })
    .Build();

Given this input:

| A | B |
|---|--------|
| 1 | 2      |

the first column gets Width = 25 and the second Width = 75 (a 3:9 ratio of dashes, normalized to 100). The HTML renderer emits a <colgroup> with <col style="width:N%" /> entries so the widths flow through to the rendered table. The values are also available on Table.ColumnDefinitions[i].Width for custom renderers.

Grid tables

Enable with .UseGridTables() (included in UseAdvancedExtensions()).

Grid tables use +, -, and | characters to draw a grid. They support multi-line cells, column spanning, and richer content than pipe tables.

Basic grid table

+-----------+-----------+
| Header 1  | Header 2  |
+===========+===========+
| Cell 1    | Cell 2    |
+-----------+-----------+
| Cell 3    | Cell 4    |
+-----------+-----------+

Header 1	Header 2
Cell 1	Cell 2
Cell 3	Cell 4

Multi-line cells

Grid table cells can contain multiple lines and block-level content:

+-----------+-------------------+
| Name      | Description       |
+===========+===================+
| Markdig   | A fast, powerful  |
|           | Markdown parser.  |
+-----------+-------------------+
| cmark     | The C reference   |
|           | implementation.   |
+-----------+-------------------+

Name	Description
Markdig	A fast, powerful Markdown parser.
cmark	The C reference implementation.

Column spanning

Use a continuous line (without + separators) to span columns:

+-------+-------+
| A     | B     |
+=======+=======+
| Cell spanning |
+-------+-------+

A	B
Cell spanning

Header separator

Use = instead of - for the header separator line (+===+===+).