A command to move forward to a specific (numbered) column?

Question

Suppose I want a \gotocolumn command, with the following behavior: in a tabular with n or more columns, \gotocolumn{n} would expand to the shortest combination of \\ and & necessary to bring us forward into the n'th column. So for instance...

• In the first column of a table, \gotocolumn{3} would expand to & &.
• In the second column of a table, \gotocolumn{3} would expand to &.
• In the third column of a table, \gotocolumn{3} would expand to \relax.
• In the fourth or subsequent column of a table, \gotocolumn{3} would expand to \\ & &.

Has this been done? Could it be done? Thoughts on how?

Answer 1

You can do some bookkeeping when new columns and rows are started. If you really want to you can redefine & and \\ I chose to introduce some new macros that just "call" the normal ones and do some additional work. It looks like this:

\documentclass{article}
\newcounter{currCol}
\setcounter{currCol}{1}
\def\amp{\stepcounter{currCol}&}
\def\nl{\\\setcounter{currCol}{1}}
\newcounter{numCols}
\setcounter{numCols}{3}
\def\gotocolumn#1{%
  \ifnum\the\value{currCol}=#1%done
  \else%
    \ifnum\the\value{currCol}<#1% before same row
      \amp\gotocolumn{#1}%
    \else% after, next row
      \ifnum\the\value{currCol}<\the\value{numCols}% need additional columns
        \amp\gotocolumn{#1}%
      \else%
        \nl\gotocolumn{#1}%
      \fi%
    \fi%
  \fi%
}
\begin{document}
  \begin{tabular}{lcr}
    test \amp test \amp test\nl
    more \amp test \amp stuff\nl
    \gotocolumn{2}test \amp test\nl
    \gotocolumn{3}last\nl
    first \amp \gotocolumn{1}first
  \end{tabular}
\end{document}

Which looks like this.

It's not tested very well, so there might be some issues in border cases.