mdb-tables(1)

✨ mdb-tables(1) ✨

okay so bestie, you know how you be needing to know what tables are hiding inside an MDB database?? yeah. this is the girl for that. it lives in the Executable programs or shell commands section of your manual, and she ate fr fr.

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💖 NAME 💖

mdb-tables — get a whole listing of the tables inside an MDB database 🗂️✨

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

mdb-tables [-S] [-1 | -d delim] [-t form|table|macro|systable|report|query|linkedtable|module|relationship|dbprop|any|all] [-T] database
mdb-tables -h|--help
mdb-tables --version

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

mdb-tables is a lil utility program that ships with MDB Tools.

She spits out a list of all the tables chillin' inside an MDB database, in a format that's literally built to be used in shell scripts. it's giving "hand me to a script and I will not embarrass you" 💅

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -S, --system — show the system tables too 👀. "system tables" is generally the ones whose names start with 'MSys'.
• -1, --single-column — says the tables should be listed 1 per line. this is equivalent to --delim 0.
• -d, --delimiter delim — pick your own alternative delimiter ✨. if you don't specify one, table names get separated by a tab character — or by a newline if you passed -1.
• -t, --type type — filters the entries to show alternate types. the authorized values are form, table, macro, systable, report, query, linkedtable, module, relationship, dbprop, any, and all. default value is table.
• -T, --showtype — display the entry type identifier before each entry 🏷️.
• --version — print the mdbtools version and dip. bye 👋

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💜 NOTES 💜

bestie... this section is empty in the original. no notes. zero. the void. 🫶 (not everything has to have lore.)

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• MDB_JET3_CHARSET — defines the charset of the input JET3 (access 97) file. default is CP1252. see iconv(1) 👑.
• MDBICONV — defines the output charset. default is UTF-8. mdbtools must have been compiled with iconv for this to work, so check before you get your hopes up 😭.
• MDBOPTS — a colon-separated list of options:
  • debug_like
  • debug_write
  • debug_usage
  • debug_ole
  • debug_row
  • debug_props
  • debug_all is a shortcut for all debug_* options ✨
  • no_memo (deprecated; has no effect — she's retired, leave her alone 💀)
  • use_index (experimental; requires libmswstr — proceed with caution bb 🫣)

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⭐ HISTORY ⭐

mdb-tables first appeared in MDB Tools 0.3. a legend from the start, no cap 👑

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🦄 SEE ALSO 🦄

mdb-array(1) mdb-count(1) mdb-export(1) mdb-header(1) mdb-hexdump(1) mdb-import(1) mdb-json(1) mdb-parsecsv(1) mdb-prop(1) mdb-queries(1) mdb-schema(1) mdb-sql(1) mdb-ver(1)

(the whole friend group 💖 go say hi)

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💅 AUTHORS 💅

the mdb-tables utility was written by Brian Bruns. icon behavior, we stan 🫶

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💀 BUGS 💀

• Access allows tables to have spaces embedded in the table name. so you must specify a delimiter (-d) if you intend on piping the output of mdb-tables to a program such as awk or cut.

fr fr do not skip this one. no -d means the spaces will jump you and your script will be a mess 😭

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this one's from MDBTools 1.0.1, dated 13 July 2026 — read it, use it, slay with it 💖✨🎀