Get table names using SELECT statement in MySQL

Question

In MySQL, I know I can list the tables in a database with:

SHOW TABLES 

However, I want to insert these table names into another table, for instance:

INSERT INTO metadata(table_name) SHOW TABLES /* does not work */ 

Is there a way to get the table names using a standard SELECT statement, something like:

INSERT INTO metadata(table_name) SELECT name FROM table_names /* what should table_names be? */ 

Answer 1

To get the name of all tables use:

SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables; 

To get the name of the tables from a specific database use:

SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = 'your_database_name'; 

Now, to answer the original question, use this query:

INSERT INTO table_name     SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables         WHERE table_schema = 'your_database_name'; 

For more details see: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/information-schema.html

Answer 2

Try:

select * from information_schema.tables 

See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/information-schema.html