Table formation using in Latex using Multirow and multicolumn

Question

I wrote a code like the one below:

\begin{table}
% table caption is above the table
\caption{Sample}
\label{tab:2}       % Give a unique label
% For LaTeX tables use
\begin{tabular}{c|c|p{2cm}|p{2cm}|p{2cm}|p{2cm}}
\hline\noalign{\smallskip}
{Task size} & {Type} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{{Makespan}} & 
\multicolumn{2}{c}{{Execution Cost }}
 \\ \hline
{}&{}& X & Y & X & Y \\
\noalign{\smallskip}\hline\noalign{\smallskip}
 \multirow{4}{*}{100} & A & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
 & B & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
 & C & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
 & D & 6 & 4  &10&11\\ \hline
\multirow{4}{*}{200} & A & 6 & 4 &10&11  \\
 & B & 6 & 4  &10&11\\
 & C & 6 & 4  &10&11\\
 & D & 6 & 4  &10&11\\ \hline
 \multirow{4}{*}{300} & A & 6 & 4  &10&11 \\
 & B & 6 & 4  &10&11\\
 & C & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
 & D & 6 & 4  &10&11\\ \hline
 \multirow{4}{*}{400} & A & 6 & 4  &10&11 \\
 & B & 6 & 4  &10&11\\
 & C & 6 & 4  &10&11\\
 & D & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\ \hline
\noalign{\smallskip}\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

and I wish to take away the horizontal lines in the first and second columns that come under the names, and the 'p' used for column size is not giving the actual dimensions. Any help is really appreciated.

Answer 1

Some suggestions:

• Get rid of all vertical rules and most horizontal rules in the table. All those lines don't really improve legibility -- in fact, they add a lot of visual clutter that may reduce legibility...

• Load the booktabs package and use its \toprule, midrule, \bottomrule, and \cmidrule macros to get well-spaced horizontal rules.

• Your table, with its four p columns, is actually (slightly) too wide for the text block. Consider using a tabularx environment and setting its width to \textwidth; then, let LaTeX do all the tedious work related to calculating column widths.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{booktabs,tabularx,caption}
\newcolumntype{C}{>{\centering\arraybackslash}X} % centered version of "X" column type 
\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\caption{Sample}
\label{tab:2} 

\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{ll CCCC }
\toprule
Task size & Type & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Makespan} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Execution Cost} \\
\cmidrule(lr){3-4} \cmidrule(l){5-6}
& & XXX & YYY & XXX & YYY \\
\midrule
100 & A & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & B & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & C & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & D & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\\addlinespace
100 & A & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & B & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & C & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & D & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\\addlinespace
100 & A & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & B & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & C & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & D & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\\addlinespace
100 & A & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & B & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & C & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
    & D & 6 & 4 &10&11 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabularx}
\end{table}
\end{document}