Question

How do you determine in oracle whether a table exists?
On a script file, I wanted to delete a table only if it exists.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Oracle has an all_tables table, you could query that to see.

Maybe something like this:

declare
    v_tab_count number := 0;
begin
    select count(*)
    into v_tab_count
    from all_tables
    where table_name = 'MY_TABLE';

    if v_tab_count > 0 then
        execute immediate 'drop table my_table';
    else
        dbms_output.put_line('The table isn''t there! maybe you deleted it already?');
    end if;
exception
    when others then
        dbms_output.put_line( sqlerrm);
end if;
/

I know I commented earlier on someone else’s post that I didn’t like using execute immediate for this, but I’d forgotten that it’s the only way to perform a drop table from PL/SQL.