MySQL has a special syntax that will tie your soul to MySQL but otherwise work:

drop table X if exists;
[download]

Personally, I prefer a Perl solution to this problem:

sub tableExists
{
    my ($dbh, $tableName) = @_;
    my $exists = 0;

    #my $cursor = $this->{dbh}->table_info('%','%',$tableName,'TABLE')
+;

    my $res = eval {
        my $cursor = $dbh->prepare("select * from $tableName where 1 =
+ 0");
        $cursor->execute();
        $cursor->finish;
        0E0
    };

    return defined $res;
}
[download]

The ->table_info method would be the real DBI way, but unfortunately, ->table_info isn't implemented in all cases where I needed it.