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.