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#1 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 09:45 AM

Could someone please tell me how I might determine the column type (char vs.
integer is good enough) if I know the column name?

Thanks

Jeff

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#2 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 09:45 AM

Jeff wrote:
>
> Could someone please tell me how I might determine the column type (char
> vs. integer is good enough) if I know the column name?

I don't see the column name to have any real link to what type of column it
is. But if you are to create a table, and not sure what type to use, then you
have to think of what you want to store, has it to be something that a human
must be able to determine what the data means when looking on that one table
or not.
Text based searches do take longer time than numeric (int/float), while
numeric values always takes the full size, text based many times just takes
the length of the string.

I would avoid to use text based ID columns.

--

//Aho

#3 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 09:45 AM

Jeff schrieb:
>
> Could someone please tell me how I might determine the column type (char
> vs. integer is good enough) if I know the column name?

Take a look at the SHOW commands in the mysql manual.
SHOW CREATE TABLE already has the information you need, but IIRC it's
just a single text string that would need to be parsed, and I also
recall that there are variants of the SHOW command that will return
parsed information.

Regards,
Jo

#4 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 09:45 AM

> Could someone please tell me how I might determine the column type (char
> vs. integer is good enough) if I know the column name?

If you are doing so from PHP, there is a separate function for that. In
SQL, the command:

SHOW FIELDS FROM <table name>

Will get you the column details.

Best regards,
--
Willem Bogaerts

Application smith
Kratz B.V.
http://www.kratz.nl/

#5 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 09:45 AM

Willem Bogaerts wrote:
>> Could someone please tell me how I might determine the column type (char
>> vs. integer is good enough) if I know the column name?
>
> If you are doing so from PHP, there is a separate function for that. In
> SQL, the command:
>
> SHOW FIELDS FROM <table name>
>
> Will get you the column details.
>
> Best regards,

shorter version of show fields is desc <table name> if you'd like to
save time by typing less.

--
lark -- hamzee@sbcdeglobalspam.net
To reply to me directly, delete "despam".

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how to determine column type