By your reference to SQLPLUS I am cleverly able to deduce you are working with Oracle. Not to take away from [id://jZed]'s answer, you may require more meta-data about the table. :)
There is a view in Oracle called 'ALL_TAB_COLUMNS' from which you can select COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, and all kinds of other cool information:
select column_name, data_type from ALL_TAB_COLUMNS where table_name =
+'FOO';
Update: Here is the describe on ALL_TAB_COLUMNS for my version of Oracle (10.0.2):
SQL> desc all_tab_columns;
Name Null? Type
----------------------------------------- -------- ------------------
+----------
OWNER NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
TABLE_NAME NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
COLUMN_NAME NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
DATA_TYPE VARCHAR2(106)
DATA_TYPE_MOD VARCHAR2(3)
DATA_TYPE_OWNER VARCHAR2(30)
DATA_LENGTH NOT NULL NUMBER
DATA_PRECISION NUMBER
DATA_SCALE NUMBER
NULLABLE VARCHAR2(1)
COLUMN_ID NUMBER
DEFAULT_LENGTH NUMBER
DATA_DEFAULT LONG
NUM_DISTINCT NUMBER
LOW_VALUE RAW(32)
HIGH_VALUE RAW(32)
DENSITY NUMBER
NUM_NULLS NUMBER
NUM_BUCKETS NUMBER
LAST_ANALYZED DATE
SAMPLE_SIZE NUMBER
CHARACTER_SET_NAME VARCHAR2(44)
CHAR_COL_DECL_LENGTH NUMBER
GLOBAL_STATS VARCHAR2(3)
USER_STATS VARCHAR2(3)
AVG_COL_LEN NUMBER
CHAR_LENGTH NUMBER
CHAR_USED VARCHAR2(1)
V80_FMT_IMAGE VARCHAR2(3)
DATA_UPGRADED VARCHAR2(3)
HISTOGRAM VARCHAR2(15)
No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde
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