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 13.7.1.3, “GRANT Syntax”.
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 13.7.5.41, “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 TEMPORARY tables.
The statement does not end an ongoing transaction.
No access rights are checked. (A TEMPORARY
table 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.