Create a table without a header in Markdown

Question

Is it possible to create a table without a header in Markdown?

The HTML would look like this:

<table>
<tr>
    <td>Key 1</td>
    <td>Value 1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>Key 2</td>
    <td>Value 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

Answer 1

Most Markdown parsers don't support tables without headers. That means the separation line for headers is mandatory.

Parsers that do not support tables without headers

• multimarkdown
• Maruku: A popular implementation in Ruby
• byword: "All tables must begin with one or more rows of headers"

• PHP Markdown Extra "second line contains a mandatory separator line between the headers and the content"

• RDiscount Uses PHP Markdown Extra syntax.

• GitHub Flavoured Markdown
• Parsedown: A parser in PHP (used e.g. in Laravel emails)

Parsers that do support tables without headers.

• Kramdown: A parser in Ruby
• Text::MultiMarkdown: Perl CPAN module.
• MultiMarkdown: Windows application.
• ParseDown Extra: A parser in PHP.
• Pandoc: A document converter for the command line written in Haskell (supports header-less tables via its simple_tables and multiline_tables extensions)
• Flexmark: A parser in Java.

CSS solution

If you're able to change the CSS of the HTML output you can however leverage the :empty pseudo class to hide an empty header and make it look like there is no header at all.