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in reply to Field names of database table from DBI

The short answer is, no, there's not a cleaner, portable way to get a list of field names without doing some kind of select statement. If you don't mind sacrificing a little portability, you can use a driver-specific way to do it. For example, in DBD::mysql, you could do 
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("LISTFIELDS $table");
$sth->execute;
my $names_aref = $sth->{NAME};

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Check your appropriate DBD::driver manpage for more specific details if you choose to go this route.

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RE: Re: Field names of database table from DBI
by jettero (Monsignor) on Aug 01, 2000 at 16:08 UTC
    I'm pretty sure LISTFIELDS doesn't work in my mysql. I've always used this: 
    my $s = $h->prepare("show fields from $table");
$s->execute; 
$s->bind_col(1, \$name);
push @names, $name while($s->fetch);

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[d/l]
      SHOW COLUMNS FROM $table should also work 
      #!/usr/bin/perl

# connect to db
my $dbh = DBI->connect(bla..bla..bla);
my $sql_q = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM $table";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql_q);
$sth->execute;

while (@row = $sth->fetchrow_array){
print"Field    Type     Null     Key     Default    Extra\n";
print"----------------------------------------------------\n";
print"$row[0]  $row[1]  $row[2]  $row[3] $row[4]    $row[5]\n";

}

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[d/l]
        This is database dependant. It won't work for MS SQL through the DBD::ODBC driver, for instance.
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