DESCRIBE

Provides information about a table's columns. Acts as a shortcut for SHOW COLUMNS, displaying field names, types, and other attributes.

Syntax

{DESCRIBE | DESC} tbl_name [col_name | wild]

Description

DESCRIBE provides information about the columns in a table.It is a shortcut for SHOW COLUMNS FROM.These statements also display information for views.

col_name can be a column name, or a string containing theSQL "%" and "_" wildcard characters toobtain output only for the columns with names matching the string. There is noneed to enclose the string within quotes unless it contains spaces or otherspecial characters.

DESCRIBE city;
+------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field      | Type     | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Id         | int(11)  | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| Name       | char(35) | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| Country    | char(3)  | NO   | UNI |         |                |
| District   | char(20) | YES  | MUL |         |                |
| Population | int(11)  | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

The description for SHOW COLUMNS providesmore information about the output columns.

See Also

• SHOW COLUMNS

• INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS Table

• mysqlshow

_{This page is licensed: GPLv2, originally from fill_help_tables.sql}