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Unexpected behavior of DROP VIEW/TABLE IF EXISTS - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From David G. Johnston
Subject Unexpected behavior of DROP VIEW/TABLE IF EXISTS
Date
Msg-id CAKFQuwbzQ9u_pkuvgBJqLrH8LkM_NDRV6Exaxmhx6H9qZtmwjQ@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: Unexpected behavior of DROP VIEW/TABLE IF EXISTS  (Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Unexpected behavior of DROP VIEW/TABLE IF EXISTS
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On Tuesday, June 26, 2018, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> wrote:
2018-06-26 17:23 GMT+02:00 Peter Moser <pitiz29a@gmail.com>:
Hi,
I want to delete a table X, that may not exist, hence I execute

        DROP TABLE IF EXISTS X;

However, if X is a view, I get an error

        ERROR: "X" is not a table
        HINT: Use DROP VIEW to remove a view.
        SQL state: 42809

That is unexpected and also difficult to handle

DROP TABLE should to remove table and nothing else, like DROP VIEW should to drop just view and nothing else. It is safeguard.

Peter isn't asking for drop table to drop a view though, he's asking for the documented behavior:

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

There is no Table named X in the database so the command should be a noop with a notice.  I would concur, though I'm open to just fixing it in v12 and back patching a documentation bug fix stating the exception due to relations sharing a namespace but there be lacking a corresponding shared namespace "drop relation" command.

David J.

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