By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: June 30, 2021
To show Postgres table information, use the "describe" command. Assuming that you want to get information about a database table named users, and you're logged into a Postgresql database using the psql client, issue this command at the psql prompt:
\d users
This will provide a description of the table named users. As an example, your output from this command should look like this:
mydatabase=> \d users
Table "public.users"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+------------------------+------------------------------------
user_id | integer | not null default
nextval('"users_user_id_seq"'::text)
username | character varying(24) | not null
firstname | character varying(24) | not null
lastname | character varying(24) | not null
companyname | character varying(24) |
password | character varying(255) | not null
email_addr | character varying(24) | not null
Indexes:
"users_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (user_id)
Of course the fields in your database will be different, but the output should appear similar.
This output was generated with the psql client for Postgresql 8.0.3.

