DESCRIBE

Purpose

You can use this statement to query the schema of a table or column.

EXPLAIN, DESCRIBE, and DESC are synonyms.

Syntax

{EXPLAIN  DESCRIBE  DESC} table_name [column_name  wild];

Parameters

Examples

• Query the definition of table t1.

  obclient> DESCRIBE t1;
  +-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
   Field  Type         Null  Key  Default  Extra 
  +-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
   c1     int(11)      NO    PRI  NULL           
   c2     int(11)      YES        NULL           
   c3     varchar(20)  YES        NULL           
  +-------+-------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
  3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
  

• Query the definition of column c1 in table t1.

  obclient> DESCRIBE t1 c1;
  +-------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
   Field  Type     Null  Key  Default  Extra 
  +-------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
   c1     int(11)  NO    PRI  NULL           
  +-------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
  1 row in set (0.00 sec)