HBase shell commands

HBase shell is a JRuby-based shell that provides an interface to HBase to perform operations such as creating tables and other operations. We can go to HBase shell using the following command:

hbase shell

Alternatively, we can use the following command, depending on the directory you are in or whether the environment variable is set:

bin/hbase shell

Once we type in one of the previous commands, we will get a prompt:

hbase(main):026:0>

At this prompt, we can type in the commands. We can always type help to get the list of available commands, and help command_name to get help on the particular command, as follows:

hbase(main):026:0> help

Similarly, with a particular command, it is as follows:

hbase(main):026:0> help 'scan'

Let's look at the commands and their descriptions.

Commands	Description
General Commands
status	This shows the server status, for example: 5 servers, 0 dead, 25.0000 average load This has three switches, as follows: hbase&gt...