Show or list tables in a MySQL database
Contributed by webgod 
February 22, 2005 
Tagged: MySQL
Once you have selected a database, you can list the tables in it by using the show command.
To view all of the tables in the selected database, use:
SHOW TABLES;
[code]
To view all of the tables in a different database that isn't selected:
[code]SHOW TABLES IN other_database;
If you are looking for a specific table but don't remember it's exact name, you can use a wildcard with either of the above commands. For example, to find tables ending in "user" from the database "bigdb" use:
SHOW TABLES IN bigdb LIKE '%user';