Help with describe

[kiss-o-matic]

Hi. The version of phpmyadmin that my provider provides really sucks. I basically can't edit any text type fields that are over X amount of characters (a few sentences, basically). I'm trying to write my own interface, but have hit a stump. When I use 'DESCRIBE table' or 'SHOW COLUMNS FROM table' in a terminal, or in the phpmyadmin SQL window, it returns all rows for that table. However, w/ the code below, I only get the first row:

$result = mysql_query("DESCRIBE mytable");
$table = @mysql_fetch_assoc( $result );
prit_r( $table );

The above returns this:
[!--quoteo--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]Array ( [Field] => id [Type] => int(11) [Null] => [Key] => PRI [Default] => [Extra] => auto_increment ) [/quote]

which, as before, just the first row. Shouldn't this be a multi-dimensional array, and not an associative one? Guess I'm missing something. It is late, afterall.