figure/table caption formatting without packages

Question

I am writing a document which needs to have tables and figures.

Normally for formatting the caption of figures/tables I use

\renewcommand{\@makecaption}

But it affects both tables and figures captions.

Is there any way to define different formatting for captions, e.g. bold captions for tables and italic captions for figures? I'd like to do this without using packages.

Answer 1

Using the caption package is more friendly, as it allows for setting captions for figures and tables differently out of the box.

If you really don't want to use packages (I can't see why), then

\newcommand{\@maketablecaption}{...}
\newcommand{\@makefigurecaption}{...}
\toks@=\expandafter{\table}
\edef\table{\let\noexpand\@makecaption\noexpand\@maketablecaption\the\toks@}
\toks@=\expandafter{\figure}
\edef\figure{\let\noexpand\@makecaption\noexpand\@makefigurecaption\the\toks@}

where \@maketablecaption and \@makefigurecaption are defined as it suits you.