R Markdown: How to place two tables side by side using ‘knitr’ and ‘kableExtra’

Intro

When I was recently writing some report using R Markdown, I wanted to place two rather small tables side by side. Since I usually use the kable()-function of the knitr package and the kableExtra package to print tables, I tried to find a solution for my problem using both packages.

Since my Google search (“two tables side by side with kableExtra” or something similar) did not return a helpful result, I experimented with some table formating options provided by the kableExtra package. Here is my solution.

Packages and data

For printing the tables we need to install and load two packages: knitr and kableExtra. The dplyr packages is required for some data manipulation. The data we want to put into the tables stem from the bundesligR package which contains final tables of Germany's highest football (soccer) league. We want to place the final tables of two seasons (1985/86 and 2015/16) side by side.

df <- bundesligR::bundesligR 
table.1985 <- df %>%
  filter(Season == 1985) %>%
    select(Position, Team, Points)
table.2015 <- df %>%
  filter(Season == 2015) %>%
    select(Position, Team, Points)

Now, we place both tables side by side using some functionality of the kableExtra package:

table.1985 %>%
  kable("html", align = 'clc', caption = 'Bundesliga, Season 1985/86') %>%
    kable_styling(full_width = F, position = "float_left")

table.2015 %>%
  kable("html", align = 'clc', caption = 'Bundesliga, Season 2015/16') %>%
    kable_styling(full_width = F, position = "right")

Bundesliga, Season 1985/86

Position	Team	Points
1	FC Bayern Muenchen	70
2	Werder Bremen	69
3	FC Bayer 05 Uerdingen	64
4	Borussia Moenchengladbach	57
5	VfB Stuttgart	58
6	TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen	55
7	Hamburger SV	56
8	SV Waldhof Mannheim	44
9	VfL Bochum	46
10	FC Schalke 04	41
11	1. FC Kaiserslautern	40
12	1. FC Nuernberg	41
13	1. FC Koeln	38
14	Fortuna Duesseldorf	40
15	Eintracht Frankfurt	35
16	Borussia Dortmund	38
17	1. FC Saarbruecken	27
18	Hannover 96	23

Bundesliga, Season 2015/16

Position	Team	Points
1	FC Bayern Muenchen	88
2	Borussia Dortmund	78
3	Bayer 04 Leverkusen	60
4	Borussia Moenchengladbach	55
5	FC Schalke 04	52
6	1. FSV Mainz 05	50
7	Hertha BSC	50
8	VfL Wolfsburg	45
9	1. FC Koeln	43
10	Hamburger SV	41
11	FC Ingolstadt 04	40
12	FC Augsburg	38
13	Werder Bremen	38
14	SV Darmstadt 98	38
15	TSG 1899 Hoffenheim	37
16	Eintracht Frankfurt	36
17	VfB Stuttgart	33
18	Hannover 96	25

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The trick is to set the position argument to float_left (left table) and right (right table). Furthermore, the argument full_width must be set to FALSE in both tables.

To Do

Unfortunately, the given example only works for rendering HTML documents. Does anyone know how to place two tables side by side when the output format is PDF/LaTeX?