Fit table size with the page size in latex

Question

I have many tables with different numbers of columns that should fit with the page size. For that, I used codes similar to the one below:

\begin{table}
    \caption{Values}
    \centering
    \resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{
        \begin{tabular}{!{\vrule}l!{\vrule}l!{\vrule}l!{\vrule}l!{\vrule}l!{\vrule}l} 
            \toprule
            DS             & Criterion1 & Criterion2 & Criterion3 & Criterion4  \\ 
            \midrule
            DS1 & V1 & V2 & V3  & V4 \\ 
            \midrule
            DS2       & V5 & V6 & V7 & V8 \\ 
            \midrule
            DS3       & V9 & V10 & V11 & V12 \\ 
            \midrule
            DS4 & V13 & V14 & V15 & V16 \\
            \botrule
        \end{tabular}
    }
\end{table}

This code generates the tables but shows errors of the kind: Illegal characters in array arg . I didn't understand this error.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

My suggestion to edit your code:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{tabularx,booktabs}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\begin{table}
  \caption{Values}
  \label{tab:n}
  \centering
  \begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{*{5}{X}}
    \toprule
    DS  & Criterion1 & Criterion2 & Criterion3 & Criterion4 \\ 
    \midrule
    DS1 & V1         & V2         & V3         & V4 \\ 
    \midrule
    DS2 & V5         & V6         & V7         & V8 \\ 
    \midrule
    DS3 & V9         & V10        & V11        & V12 \\ 
    \midrule
    DS4 & V13        & V14        & V15        & V16 \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabularx}
\end{table}
\end{document}

1. Not related, but you should have a command \\label{...} after your \\caption{...} .

2. Do not mix vertical lines (best of all avoid them) with the horizontal ones from the package booktabs ( toprule , midrule , bottomrule ).

3. And this should hopefully answer your question: try column ytpe X from the package tabularx to better stretch the width of columns (I guess you have tables with more column than this one).