DROP [TEMPORARY] TABLE [IF EXISTS]
tbl_name [, tbl_name] ...
[RESTRICT | CASCADE]
DROP TABLE removes one or more
tables. You must have the DROP
privilege for each table. All table data and the table definition
are removed, so be
careful with this statement! If any of the tables named
in the argument list do not exist, MySQL returns an error
indicating by name which nonexisting tables it was unable to drop,
but it also drops all of the tables in the list that do exist.
When a table is dropped, user privileges on the table are
not automatically dropped. See
Section 12.4.1.3, “GRANT Syntax”.
Note that for a partitioned table, DROP
TABLE permanently removes the table definition, all of
its partitions, and all of the data which was stored in those
partitions. It also removes the partitioning definition
(.par) file associated with the dropped
table.
Use IF EXISTS to prevent an error from
occurring for tables that do not exist. A NOTE
is generated for each nonexistent table when using IF
EXISTS. See Section 12.4.5.41, “SHOW WARNINGS Syntax”.
RESTRICT and CASCADE are
permitted to make porting easier. In MySQL 5.5, they
do nothing.
DROP TABLE automatically commits
the current active transaction, unless you use the
TEMPORARY keyword.
The TEMPORARY keyword has the following
effects:
The statement drops only
TEMPORARYtables.The statement does not end an ongoing transaction.
No access rights are checked. (A
TEMPORARYtable is visible only to the session that created it, so no check is necessary.)
Using TEMPORARY is a good way to ensure that
you do not accidentally drop a non-TEMPORARY
table.