Recently I needed to select from multiple tables and get the column names and set up a custom default column definition loosely based on the type. So I did: 
foreach my $tablename (@tables) {

        my $sth = $dbh->prepare(qq{select * from $tablename limit 1});
+ 
        $sth->execute();
        my @fields = @{$sth->{NAME}};
        for (0 .. $#fields)
        {       
          $default_column{$fields[$_]} = $sth->{mysql_is_num}[
$_] ? 0 : '""';
        }
        $table_columns{$tablename} = \@fields; 

}

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Is there a better way to do this, perhaps with using INFORMATION SCHEMA now available in MySQL 5, which I am using? Thanks monks.

In reply to Selecting from multiple tables by Anonymous Monk

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