By your reference to SQLPLUS I am cleverly able to deduce you are working with Oracle. Not to take away from [id://jZed]'s answer, you may require more meta-data about the table. :)

There is a view in Oracle called 'ALL_TAB_COLUMNS' from which you can select COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE, and all kinds of other cool information:

select column_name, data_type from ALL_TAB_COLUMNS where table_name = 
+'FOO';

[download]

Update: Here is the describe on ALL_TAB_COLUMNS for my version of Oracle (10.0.2):

SQL> desc all_tab_columns;
 Name                                      Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ------------------
+----------
 OWNER                                     NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
 TABLE_NAME                                NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
 COLUMN_NAME                               NOT NULL VARCHAR2(30)
 DATA_TYPE                                          VARCHAR2(106)
 DATA_TYPE_MOD                                      VARCHAR2(3)
 DATA_TYPE_OWNER                                    VARCHAR2(30)
 DATA_LENGTH                               NOT NULL NUMBER
 DATA_PRECISION                                     NUMBER
 DATA_SCALE                                         NUMBER
 NULLABLE                                           VARCHAR2(1)
 COLUMN_ID                                          NUMBER
 DEFAULT_LENGTH                                     NUMBER
 DATA_DEFAULT                                       LONG
 NUM_DISTINCT                                       NUMBER
 LOW_VALUE                                          RAW(32)
 HIGH_VALUE                                         RAW(32)
 DENSITY                                            NUMBER
 NUM_NULLS                                          NUMBER
 NUM_BUCKETS                                        NUMBER
 LAST_ANALYZED                                      DATE
 SAMPLE_SIZE                                        NUMBER
 CHARACTER_SET_NAME                                 VARCHAR2(44)
 CHAR_COL_DECL_LENGTH                               NUMBER
 GLOBAL_STATS                                       VARCHAR2(3)
 USER_STATS                                         VARCHAR2(3)
 AVG_COL_LEN                                        NUMBER
 CHAR_LENGTH                                        NUMBER
 CHAR_USED                                          VARCHAR2(1)
 V80_FMT_IMAGE                                      VARCHAR2(3)
 DATA_UPGRADED                                      VARCHAR2(3)
 HISTOGRAM                                          VARCHAR2(15)

[download]

No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde

In reply to Re: "DESCRIBE" Command via DBI? by ptum
in thread "DESCRIBE" Command via DBI? by Anonymous Monk

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