in reply to if table exists (DBI)

MySQL allows for this logic built into its statements, for example: 
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS my_table (
  foo INT,
  bar VARCHAR(25)
);

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AFAIK, this is only valid for MySQL, and not other SQL variants. A quick way to get all of your tables is to send a SHOW TABLES query. It will return a list of all of the tables. Oops, looks like you knew that and wanted to avoid it.

blokhead

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Re^2: if table exists (DBI)
by erix (Prior) on Apr 26, 2013 at 16:47 UTC

    this is only valid for MySQL,

    PostgreSQL has IF [NOT] EXISTS for many objects; also for TABLE:

    $ psql
psql (9.2.4)
Type "help" for help.
# CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS my_table (foo INT, bar VARCHAR (25) );
CREATE TABLE
# \d my_table 
          Table "public.my_table"
 Column |         Type          | Modifiers 
--------+-----------------------+-----------
 foo    | integer               | 
 bar    | character varying(25) |

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    ( So there is also: DROP <object> IF EXISTS ... ;

    # drop table if exists my_table; -- exists
DROP TABLE
# drop table if exists my_table; -- no table is no problem:
DROP TABLE
#

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    )

    Of course postgres can also ROLLBACK on DDL statements. Not many DBMS's implement *that*, I think.

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