Custom environments with multicolumn header

Question

I tried to create an environment that creates a tabular frame around the content of the environment.

For instance:

\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
  \hline
  \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{Team sheet} \\
  \hline 
\end{tabular}

should become

\begin{example}Team sheet\end{example}

and

\newenvironment{example}{
  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
  \hline
  \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{
 }{
   } \\\hline \end{tabular}
 }

But "splitting up" the parentheses of \multicol does not work as straight forward as I wanted due to the obvious parentheses pairing problem. So how do I work around that? Is there an environment for that command available that would allow for this "splitting"?

Answer 1

The easiest way to accomplish this is to pass the title as an argument:

\newenvironment{example}[1]
  {\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
   \hline
   \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{#1} \\
  }
  {\\\hline \end{tabular}}

and calling it as

\begin{example}{Team sheet}
... the data ...
\end{example}

This better reflects the role of the objects, too.

Adding a frame can be done with the mdframed package.

Answer 2

You can save the contents in a savebox and use it inside multicolumn:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array}
\newenvironment{example}{%
  \setbox0=\hbox\bgroup
 }{
  \egroup%
  \begin{tabular}{|l|l|}
  \hline
  \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{\box0}\\\hline
  \end{tabular}
 }

\begin{document}

\begin{example}
Team sheet
\end{example}

\end{document}

However You can also use the command \fbox.