Question

I have a large table with around 100 columns and hence is difficult to locate a column when using desc tablename.

Can I do a order by when I describe a table e.g. desc users order by something?

The output of desc users has Field | Type as column headers Field has column names, so I would like to do something like desc users order by Field. Is there something for this?

Answer 1

You want to use the ANSI INFORMATION_SCHEMA:

SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, IS_NULLABLE, COLUMN_DEFAULT
  FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
 WHERE table_name = 'tbl_name'
  [AND table_schema = 'db_name']
  [AND column_name LIKE 'wild']
ORDER BY COLUMN_NAME

Reference:

• INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS