[Tex/LaTex] Align large vertical delimiters (brackets) to rows of a table

Question

I’m trying to typeset a table of data, with brackets (i.e. }) at the right-hand side to show a classification of the rows.  Something like:

-----------------------
| Aardvark | Armenia  |  \
|----------|----------|  |- things beginning with vowels 
| Elephant | Ethiopia |  /
|----------|----------|
| Platypus | Portugal |  \
|----------|----------|  |- things beginning with consonants
| Zebra    | Zimbabwe |  /
-----------------------

The main data is in a tabular environment.  Is there a nice way to put the brackets on the right like this, aligned correctly with the rows?

Edit: if possible, I’d really prefer an approach which doesn’t interfere with how the table of data itself comes out.

Answer 1

You can use bigdelim from multirow to achieve this:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{multirow,bigdelim}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{lll}
Aardvark & Armenia & \rdelim\}{2}{3mm}[things beginning with vowels] \\
Elephant & Ethiopia \\
Platypus & Portugal & \rdelim\}{2}{3mm}[things beginning with consonants] \\
Zebra  & Zimbabwe \\
text  & text & \rdelim\}{3}{3mm}[things beginning and ending with t] \\
text  & text \\
text  & text \\
\end{tabular} 
\end{document}