Question

I’m trying to do something like this:

DELETE FROM table_1
WHERE  table_1.id IN (SELECT table_1.id
                      FROM   table_1,
                             table_2,
                             table_3
                      WHERE  table_1.id = table_2.table_1_id
                      AND    table_2.id = table_3.table_2_id
                      AND    table_3.id = 5) 

Seems like MySQL won’t let me have table_1 in the nested SELECT. Suggestions?

Answer 1

You’re probably getting this error:

ERROR 1093 (HY000): You can't specify target table 'table_1' for update in FROM clause.

You should be able to do this using MySQL’s multiple-table DELETE syntax instead:

DELETE table_1.*
FROM   table_1,
       table_2,
       table_3
WHERE  table_1.id = table_2.table_1_id
AND    table_2.id = table_3.table_2_id
AND    table_3.id = 5

The above query should work, but as a general rule I would recommend using ANSI JOIN syntax instead:

DELETE table_1.*
FROM   table_1
INNER JOIN table_2 on table_2.table_1_id = table_1.id
INNER JOIN table_3 on table_3.table_2_id = table_2.id
WHERE table_3.id = 5