How to get column name and type in hive

Question

I know of these,

• To get column names in a table we can fire:

  show columns in <database>.<table_name>
  

• To get description of a table (including column_name, column_type and many other details):

  describe [formatted] <database>.<table_name>
  

I know that I can use the above query and filter the result to get the columns names and types. But I want to know if there is any direct command to get just the column names and types like select columns, column_type ...?

Answer 1

In HIVE you could use:

DESCRIBE FORMATTED [DatabaseName].[TableName] [Column Name];

This gives you the column data type and some stats of that column.

DESCRIBE [DatabaseName].[TableName] [Column Name];

This just gives you the data type and comments if available for a specific column.

Hope this helps.