Hive Alter table change Column Name

Question

I am trying to rename a columnName in Hive. Is there a way to rename column name in Hive .

tableA (column1 ,_c1,_c2) to tableA(column1,column2,column3) ??

Answer 1

Change Column Name/Type/Position/Comment:

ALTER TABLE table_name CHANGE [COLUMN] col_old_name col_new_name column_type [COMMENT col_comment] [FIRST|AFTER column_name]

Example:

CREATE TABLE test_change (a int, b int, c int);  // will change column a's name to a1 ALTER TABLE test_change CHANGE a a1 INT; 

Answer 2

Command works only if "use" -command has been first used to define the database where working in. Table column renaming syntax using DATABASE.TABLE throws error and does not work. Version: HIVE 0.12.

EXAMPLE:

hive> ALTER TABLE databasename.tablename CHANGE old_column_name new_column_name;    MismatchedTokenException(49!=90)         at org.antlr.runtime.BaseRecognizer.recoverFromMismatchedToken(BaseRecognizer.java:617)         at org.antlr.runtime.BaseRecognizer.match(BaseRecognizer.java:115)         at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.alterStatementSuffixExchangePartition(HiveParser.java:11492)         ...  hive> use databasename;  hive> ALTER TABLE tablename CHANGE old_column_name new_column_name;  OK