How do I set the table cell widths to minimum except last column?

Question

I have a table with 100% width. If I put s in it, they get spread out with equal length columns. However, I want all the columns except last to have a

Answer 1

Slightly different topic but maybe it helps someone who stumbles on this question like me.
_{(I just saw the comment by Campbeln who suggests exactly this after writing my answer below, so this is basically a detailed explanation of his comment)}

I had the problem the other way around: I wanted to set one table column to the minimum width possible without breaking it on white space (last column in the following example) but the other's width should be dynamic (including line breaks):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
element1 | data      | junk here which can   | last column, minimum width, one line
                       span multiple lines
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
elem     | more data | other stuff           | again, last column
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
more     | of        | these                 | rows
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Simple solution:

HTML

  

    
element1
    
data
    
junk here which can span multiple lines
    
last column, minimum width, one line
  
  

    
elem
    
more data
    
other stuff
    
again, last column
  
  

    
more
    
of
    
these
    
rows
  

CSS

td.shrink {
  white-space: nowrap;
  width: 1px;
}

Columns with class shrink only expand to the minimum width but others stay dynamic. This works because width of td is automatically expanded to fit whole content.

Example Snippet

table {
  width: 100%;
}

td {
  padding: 10px;
}

td.shrink {
  white-space: nowrap;
  width: 1px;
}

  

    
element1
    
data
    
junk here which can span multiple lines
    
last column, minimum width, one line
  
  

    
elem
    
more data
    
other stuff
    
again, last column
  
  

    
more
    
of
    
these
    
rows