MySQL DESCRIBE Command

The MySQL's DESCRIBE or DESC both are equivalent. The DESC is the short form of DESCRIBE command and used to dipslay the information about a table like column names and constraints on column name.

The DESCRIBE command is equivalent to the following command −

SHOW columns from yourTableName command.

The following is the query that display information about a table with the help of DESCRIBE command. The query is as follows.

mysql> DESCRIBE Student;

Above, Student is the table name in my database.

The above query generates the following output.

+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| id    | int(11)      | YES  | MUL | NULL    |       |
| Name  | varchar(100) | YES  | MUL | NULL    |       |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.13 sec)

Here is the equivalent query that gives the same result. The query is as follows.

mysql> show columns from student;

The following is the output.

+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| id    | int(11)      | YES  | MUL | NULL    |       |
| Name  | varchar(100) | YES  | MUL | NULL    |       |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.03 sec)

As you see above, both of them gives the same output.