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MariaDB: DROP TABLE Statement

This MariaDB tutorial explains how to use the MariaDB DROP TABLE statement with syntax and examples.

Description

The MariaDB DROP TABLE statement allows you to remove or delete a table from the MariaDB database.

Syntax

In its simplest form, the syntax for the DROP TABLE statement in MariaDB is:

DROP TABLE table_name;

However, the full syntax for the MariaDB DROP TABLE statement is:

DROP [ TEMPORARY ] TABLE [ IF EXISTS ]
table_name1, table_name2, ...
[ RESTRICT | CASCADE ];

Parameters or Arguments

TEMPORARY
Optional. It specifies that only temporary tables should be dropped by the DROP TABLE statement.
table_name
The name of the table to remove from the database.
table_name1, table_name2
The tables to remove from the database, if removing more than one table in the DROP TABLE statement.
IF EXISTS
Optional. If specified, the DROP TABLE statement will not raise an error if one of the tables does not exist.
RESTRICT
Optional. It has no impact or effect on the DROP TABLE statement but is included in the syntax to make porting the tables to different databases easier.
CASCADE
Optional. It has no impact or effect on the DROP TABLE statement but is included in the syntax to make porting the tables to different databases easier.

Note

  • If you use the MariaDB DROP TABLE statement to drop one or more tables that do not exist, the database will raise an error (unless you specify the IF EXISTS parameter in the DROP TABLE statement).

Example

Let's look at an example that shows how to drop a table using the MariaDB DROP TABLE statement.

Drop One Table

First, let's look at a simple DROP TABLE example that shows how to use the DROP TABLE statement to drop one table in MariaDB.

For example:

DROP TABLE websites;

This DROP TABLE example would delete the table called websites.

Drop Multiple Tables

Let's look at an example where we want to drop more than one table using the DROP TABLE statement:

For example:

DROP TABLE websites, stats;

This DROP TABLE statement example would delete two tables - websites and stats. If we were worried that one of the tables doesn't exist and we don't want to raise an error, we could modify our DROP TABLE statement as follows:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS websites, stats;

This example would delete the websites and stats tables and would not raise an error if one of the tables didn't exist.

Drop Temporary Table

Finally, let's look at an example that shows how to use the DROP TABLE statement to drop a temporary table.

DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS page_loads;

This DROP TABLE example will only delete the temporary table called page_loads. If there was also a permanent table called page_loads, this DROP TABLE statement would not delete it because TEMPORARY is specified.

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