PostgreSQL - DROP TABLE

The PostgreSQL DROP TABLE statement is used to delete a table from the database. It drops all the data, indexes, triggers, constraints and permission specifications for the specified table.

Syntax

The syntax of using DROP TABLE statement in PostgreSQL is given below:

DROP TABLE [IF EXISTS] table_name;

The IF EXISTS is an optional parameter that conditionally drops table only if it exists on the database. If a table is deleted which does not exist, it will raise an error.

Example:

Consider a database containing a table called Employee with the following records:

The description of the table can be checked using \d command as shown below:

\d Employee;

This will produce the result as shown below:

                     Table "public.employee"
 Column |          Type          | Collation | Nullable | Default 
--------+------------------------+-----------+----------+---------
 empid  | integer                |           | not null | 
 name   | character varying(255) |           | not null | 
 city   | character varying(100) |           |          | 
 age    | integer                |           |          | 
 salary | numeric(18,2)          |           |          | 
Indexes:
    "employee_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (empid)

To delete this table, the following statement can be used:

DROP TABLE Employee;

After dropping the table, the \d command will throw following error:

\d Employee;	
Result: psql:commands.sql:1: error: Did not find any relation named "Employee".