title: How can I change column comments in existing Hive table without including new column name and type?
body: <p>I want to change the column comments on an existing hive table using hive 0.13. This works:</p>
  
  <p>create table test (mycolumn int);
  alter table test change mycolumn mycolumn int comment 'hello';</p>
  
  <p>But I can't find a way to do this without repeating the name of the column and the type, both of which are irrelevant to the change. For example:</p>
  
  <p>alter table test change mycolumn comment 'hello'; leads to an error.</p>
  
  <p>If this was for one column it would not be a big deal but I want to do this for large numbers of columns in tables that were not commented. I know this could be done with a script that simply copies the column name and its type but would be nice to know if there were something simpler. Thanks</p>