How To Get a List of Columns in an Existing Table? - MySQL FAQs - Understanding SQL CREATE, ALTER and DROP Statements

If you have an existing table, but you don't remember what are the columns used in the table, you can use the "SHOW COLUMNS FROM tableName" command to get a list of all columns of the specified table. You can also use the "DESCRIBE tableName" command, which gives you the same output as "SHOW COLUMNS" command. The following tutorial script shows you a good example:

mysql> SHOW COLUMNS FROM tip;

+-------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------
| Field       | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra 
+-------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------
| id          | int(11)      | NO   | PRI |         |       
| subject     | varchar(80)  | NO   |     |         |       
| description | varchar(256) | NO   |     |         |       
| create_date | date         | YES  |     | NULL    |       
+-------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------
4 rows in set (0.04 sec)