Question

I’ve used impdp and had a typo – now I’ve got a user name starting with colon (:) – e.g :my_schema.

How can I drop this user? I’ve tried everything I could think of to escape it, but nothing helps.

Edit: To clarify – I know how to drop a user. I’m having difficulty overcoming the special character issue.

Answer 1

It seems you can do this with dynamic SQL:

begin
    execute immediate 'create user ":MY_SCHEMA" identified by xxx';
end;
/

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

select username, account_status from dba_users where username = ':MY_SCHEMA';

USERNAME                       ACCOUNT_STATUS
------------------------------ --------------------------------
:MY_SCHEMA                     OPEN

begin
    execute immediate 'drop user ":MY_SCHEMA"';
end;
/

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

select username, account_status from dba_users where username = ':MY_SCHEMA';

no rows selected