Question

$sql = "SHOW TABLES FROM database";

I would like to exclude table “users”, “cars” and “gifts” for example. How can it be done?

Answer 1

You can query table names directly from the information_schema database. Assuming your database name is in the variable $your_database_name:

mysql_select_db("information_schema");
$sql = "SELECT TABLE_NAME 
  FROM TABLE
  WHERE
    TABLE_SCHEMA = '$your_database_name' 
    AND TABLE_NAME NOT IN ('users','cars','gifts')";