DESCRIBE EXTERNAL TABLE¶

Describes the VALUE column and virtual columns in an external table.

DESCRIBE can be abbreviated to DESC.

Syntax¶

DESC[RIBE] [ EXTERNAL ] TABLE <name> [ TYPE =  { COLUMNS | STAGE } ]

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name: Specifies the identifier for the external table to describe. If the identifier contains spaces or special characters, the entire string must be enclosed in double quotes. Identifiers enclosed in double quotes are also case sensitive.

To post-process the output of this command, you can use the pipe operator or the RESULT_SCAN function. Both constructs treat the output as a result set that you can query.

Create an example external table:

CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE emp ( ... );

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Describe the columns in the table:

DESC EXTERNAL TABLE emp;

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