Hive Alter table change Column Name

Question

I am trying to rename a columnName in Hive. Is there a way to rename column name in Hive .

tableA (column1 ,_c1,_c2) to tableA(column1,column2,column3) ??

Answer 1

Change Column Name/Type/Position/Comment:

ALTER TABLE table_name CHANGE [COLUMN] col_old_name col_new_name column_type [COMMENT col_comment] [FIRST|AFTER column_name]

Example:

CREATE TABLE test_change (a int, b int, c int);

// will change column a's name to a1
ALTER TABLE test_change CHANGE a a1 INT;

Answer 2

Command works only if "use" -command has been first used to define the database where working in. Table column renaming syntax using DATABASE.TABLE throws error and does not work. Version: HIVE 0.12.

EXAMPLE:

hive> ALTER TABLE databasename.tablename CHANGE old_column_name new_column_name;

  MismatchedTokenException(49!=90)
        at org.antlr.runtime.BaseRecognizer.recoverFromMismatchedToken(BaseRecognizer.java:617)
        at org.antlr.runtime.BaseRecognizer.match(BaseRecognizer.java:115)
        at org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.parse.HiveParser.alterStatementSuffixExchangePartition(HiveParser.java:11492)
        ...

hive> use databasename;

hive> ALTER TABLE tablename CHANGE old_column_name new_column_name;

OK

Answer 3

alter table table_name change old_col_name new_col_name new_col_type;

Here is the example

hive> alter table test change userVisit userVisit2 STRING;      
    OK
    Time taken: 0.26 seconds
    hive> describe test;                                      
    OK
    uservisit2              string                                      
    category                string                                      
    uuid                    string                                      
    Time taken: 0.213 seconds, Fetched: 3 row(s)