Enumeration in a table, with top-aligend column

Question

The basic problem is that I need an enumeration in a table cell. The special requirement is to have the text in the cell (or whole column) left to this cell top-aligned.

My first approach is:

\begin{table}[h!]
\begin{tabular}{r|l}
    \textbf{Input} &
  some text\\
  \textbf{Work} &
  \parbox{\linewidth}{\begin{enumerate}
      \item The first step 
      \item The second step which is very long, so this text is more than the table width and should be broken .
    \end{enumerate}}\\
    \textbf{Output}: & some other text.\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Which yields to:

As you see, the text in the left column is not top aligned. I tried multiple ways, e.g. this one but could not fix it.

My second approach was to use nested tables:

\begin{table}[h!]
\begin{tabular}{r|l}
    \textbf{Input} &
  some text\\
  \textbf{Work} &
  \begin{tabular}[t]{ll}
            1. & The first step \\
            2. & The second step which is very long, so this text is more than the table width and should be broken.\\ 
            \end{tabular}
            \\
    \textbf{Output}: & some other text.\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Which fixes the alignment issue, but cuts the text:

I tried to fix the width of the inner table (see here) but this also did not work.

How can I have an enumeration in a table with the cells to the left top-aligned? Thank you!

Answer 1

I suggest you (a) use a tabularx environment, to avoid the tedium of having to calculate the width of the second column, and (b) use a minipage[t] environment to encase the enumerate environment.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{tabularx} % for 'tabularx' env. and 'X' column type
\begin{document}
\begin{table}[h!]
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{ @{} r | X @{} }
  \textbf{Input}  & Some text.\\
  \textbf{Work}   &
      \begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}
      \raggedright % optional
      \begin{enumerate}[noitemsep]
         \item The first step 
         \item The second step is very long, so this text exceeds the 
               table width and should be line-broken automatically.\strut
     \end{enumerate}
     \end{minipage}\\
  \textbf{Output} & Some other text.\\
\end{tabularx}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Answer 2

%Preamble
\usepackage{multirow}
%______________________%
\begin{tabular}{r|l}
    \textbf{Input} &
    some text\\
\multirow{-3}{*}{\textbf{Work}} &
    \parbox{\linewidth}{\begin{enumerate}
            \item The first step 
            \item The second step which is very long, so this text is more than the table width and should be broken .
    \end{enumerate}}\\
    \textbf{Output}: & some other text.\\
\end{tabular}