In MySQL, we can use the IF EXISTS clause of the DROP TABLE statement to check whether the table exists or not before dropping it.

Example

Here’s an example to demonstrate:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t1;

That statement drops a table called t1 if it exists.

When I ran that statement, the table already existed, and so it was dropped and I got the following message:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

When I ran the statement again (after it had already been dropped), I got the following message:

Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)

So there was no error, but I did get a warning.

Let’s take a look at the warning:

SHOW WARNINGS;

Result:

+-------+------+-------------------------+
| Level | Code | Message                 |
+-------+------+-------------------------+
| Note  | 1051 | Unknown table 'test.t1' |
+-------+------+-------------------------+

The warning tells us that the table doesn’t exist, but it’s not an error.

Here’s what happens when we don’t use IF EXISTS:

DROP TABLE t1;

Result:

ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'test.t1'

This time we get an error.

Also see 5 Ways to Check if a Table Exists in MySQL if you just want to check if a table exists without dropping it.