select open change scope Open full search

PG.CENTER connects PostgreSQL documentation, reference, and ecosystem knowledge. Maintained by Pigsty.

Supported versions: Current (18) / 17 / 16 / 15 / 14
Development versions: 19 / devel
Unsupported versions: 13 / 12 / 11 / 10 / 9.6 / 9.5 / 9.4 / 9.3 / 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.0 / 8.4 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.1 / 8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3 / 7.2 / 7.1
Historical version. PostgreSQL 9.6 reached end of support in November 2021. See the current version for supported releases.

DROP TABLE

Name

DROP TABLE -- remove a table

Synopsis

DROP TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TABLE removes tables from the database. Only the table owner, the schema owner, and superuser can drop a table. To empty a table of rows without destroying the table, use DELETE or TRUNCATE.

DROP TABLE always removes any indexes, rules, triggers, and constraints that exist for the target table. However, to drop a table that is referenced by a view or a foreign-key constraint of another table, CASCADE must be specified. (CASCADE will remove a dependent view entirely, but in the foreign-key case it will only remove the foreign-key constraint, not the other table entirely.)

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the table does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to drop.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the table (such as views), and in turn all objects that depend on those objects (see Section 5.13).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the table if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To destroy two tables, films and distributors:

DROP TABLE films, distributors;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard, except that the standard only allows one table to be dropped per command, and apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

Report a documentation issue

Read the upstream documentation. For corrections, first check the current version.