While talking with Dynom and Davey I learned something really cool today - how to get the declared definition of a column all by itself with MySQL (I used version 5.0.45). Yes there are lots of other ways to get the info - not the least of which is using the information_schema - but this just struck me as being way cool.
You can even use wildcards in the column name. From a different database (note you have to have the perms to access the alternate database):
DESCRIBE Db.table column;
Example from my test db:
mysql> describe lig_test.student guardianship;
+--------------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+--------------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| guardianship | char(1) | NO | | | |
+--------------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
1 row in set (0.08 sec)
mysql> describe lig_test.student 'guard%';
+----------------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| guardian_photo | longblob | YES | | NULL | |
| guardianship | char(1) | NO | | | |
+----------------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)
