Label two tabular side by side

Question

I have 2 tabular side by side. How can I label them as (a) and (b) and can be referred from text using \ref.

\begin{tabular}{ccc}
\hline
a&b&c\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\quad
\begin{tabular}{ccc}
\hline
d&e&f\\
\hline
\end{tabular}

Answer 1

You will want to use the subcaption package for this purpose.

This package provides the subtable environment for the goal you wanted to achieve. Please read section 3 of the package documentation for details.

Please note how the \subref command has been used to refer to the subtables. If you want to refer using both main number and subnumber (e.g. 1(a)), you will want to use the \ref command. Format for all of these can be controlled. Please see the package documentation for this feature. Another useful document is here.

Anyway, here is your code.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{subcaption}

\begin{document}

\begin{table}[!tbp]
  \centering
  \begin{subtable}[t]{0.4\textwidth}
    \begin{center}
      \begin{tabular}{ccc}
        \hline
        a&b&c\\
        \hline
      \end{tabular}
      \caption{Table at left.}
      \label{tab:left}
    \end{center}
  \end{subtable}
  \quad
  \begin{subtable}[t]{0.4\textwidth}
    \begin{center}
      \begin{tabular}{ccc}
        \hline
        d&e&f\\
        \hline
      \end{tabular}
      \caption{Table at right.}
      \label{tab:right}
    \end{center}
  \end{subtable}
  \caption{This contains two subtables.}
  \label{tab:main}
\end{table}

Please see the left~(\subref{tab:left}) and right~(\subref{tab:right})
tables.

\end{document}

And here is the output.