How do we know if a table is managed table or external table?

Question

In hive when I run show tables; I get the list of all the tables, how do I know which of these are managed tables and which are external tables?

Answer 1

You can use the following command to get details of specified table:

describe formatted <your_table>;

The output will contain a row describing table type:

Table Type: EXTERNAL_TABLE

or

Table Type: MANAGED_TABLE