Question

select FIELD from (show columns FROM users)

This seems like it should work, since show columns is displaying a table of information about the table, however. I don’t really understand why this wouldn’t display properly, but regardless this may not be the easiest method to extract this information.

Answer 1

You can get the column names, types, and other meta-information from the information schema database. Example:

mysql> select column_name from information_schema.columns where table_schema='test' and table_name='t3';
+-------------+
| column_name |
+-------------+
| col1        |
| col2        |
| col3        |
| col4        |
| col5        |
+-------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)