Possible to get field names and types in a table without executing a query?

Hi all. My goal is to get a list of all field names and data types for
those fields in any given table in a mysql database. From reading the
DBI documentation, the only way I've been able to do this is by
preparing and executing a query against a table first. Then I would use
$sth->{NAME} and $sth->{TYPE} to get the field names and their
respective data types. it looks like this:

$sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM $table") or die "Can't prepare
statement!\n";
$sth->execute or die "Can not execute statement!\n";
@types = @{$sth->{TYPE}};
@cols = @{$sth->{NAME}};

This seams like wasted overhead since I don't use the results of the
query. Also, since my query is "SELECT * FROM $table", which dumps all
data in the table, you may understand my concern for wasted overhead
when dealing with tables of a significant size.

Is there a way to get table names and data types without executing a
query? If not, is there a query I can use that will... say... only
return the first row (without WHERE clauses), to minimize the overhead?

Thanks,
Brian

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