Alternative Statements to SHOW COLUMNS in MySQL

Yes, we can use DESCRIBE or EXPLAIN statements instead of SHOW COLUMNS statement to get the list of the columns in an existing table. In the example below we have applied DESCRIBE and EXPLAIN statement on ‘Employee’ table and got the same result set as got after SHOW COLUMNS statement −

mysql> DESCRIBE Employee\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
  Field: Id
   Type: int(11)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
*************************** 2. row ***************************
  Field: Name
   Type: varchar(20)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
2 rows in set (0.05 sec)

mysql> Explain Employee\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
  Field: Id
   Type: int(11)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
*************************** 2. row ***************************
  Field: Name
   Type: varchar(20)
   Null: YES
    Key:
Default: NULL
  Extra:
2 rows in set (0.04 sec)