Whats the most portable way to identify field existence?

Thats field not table -

I just want to see if a particular field exists in a specified table and
for the method to work reliably on as many mySQL versions as possible.

Obviously the most efficient would be best - I can't see anything in the
mySQL docs to do this. Did I miss it?

thanks.

Tom.

Re: Whats the most portable way to identify field existence?

wrote in message
news:MPG.21619aec8b216c7e9899cc@news-text.blueyonder.co.uk.. .
>
> Thats field not table -
>
> I just want to see if a particular field exists in a specified table and
> for the method to work reliably on as many mySQL versions as possible.
>
> Obviously the most efficient would be best - I can't see anything in the
> mySQL docs to do this. Did I miss it?
>
> thanks.
>
> Tom.

SHOW FIELDS FROM tablename LIKE 'fieldname'