The CSS solution is good and is a solution that I would advocate.

But sometimes it is hard to make CSS fit your case and sometimes you really do want to use tables (ie for non-changing grid layouts). In these cases - you can use a template to do everything - if the template language has enough mini-language to it. The following is a sample from the Template Toolkit 2 dialect (even though I show CGI::Ex::Template - it would also work with Template::Toolkit).

use CGI::Ex::Template;
my @a = qw(one two three four five six seven eight);

my $temp = q{
    [%~ cols = 3 %]
    [%~ rows = a.size DIV cols %]
    [%~ IF a.size % cols ; rows = rows + 1 ; END -%]

    <table>
    [%- FOR i IN [1 .. rows] %]
      <tr>
      [%- FOR j IN [1 .. cols] %]
        [%~ k = (i - 1) * cols + (j - 1) %]
        <td>[% a.$k %]</td>
      [%- END %]
      </tr>
    [%- END %]
    </table>
};


CGI::Ex::Template->new->process(\$temp, {a => \@a}) || die $CGI::Ex::T
+emplate::error;
[download]

The number of columns is adjusted by changing cols = 3 to whatever you'd like. That code prints out:

    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>one</td>
        <td>two</td>
        <td>three</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>four</td>
        <td>five</td>
        <td>six</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>seven</td>
        <td>eight</td>
        <td></td>
      </tr>
    </table>
[download]