HBase (Easy): How to Perform Range Prefix Scan in hbase shell

The accepted solution won't work in all cases (binary keys). In addition, using a PrefixFilter can be slow because it performs a table scan until it reaches the prefix. A more performant solution is to use a STARTROW and a FILTER like so:

 scan 'my_table', {STARTROW => 'abc', FILTER => "PrefixFilter('abc')"}

In recent versions of HBase you can now do in the hbase shell:

scan 'mytable', {ROWPREFIXFILTER => 'abc'}

This effectively does this (and also works for binary situations)

scan 'mytable', {STARTROW => 'abc', ENDROW => 'abd'}

This method is a LOT more efficient than the "PrefixFilter" approach because the latter puts all records through the comparison code the is present in this PrefixFilter class.

So it turns out to be very easy. The scan ranges are not inclusive, the logic is start <= key < end. So the answer is

scan 'mytable', {STARTROW => 'abc', ENDROW => 'abd'}