A conditional DROP TABLE function

Hi All,

Here's a Conditional drop_table func for those interested. There was a
thread on this a long time back.

We do this all the time :

DELETE TABLE sales;
CREATE TABLE sales (...);

But nobody likes

ERROR: table "sales" does not exist

which we see all the time in the logs. I want to show the logs to none
db folk -- so we can't have those error messages in it.

(There must be some explaination why postgresql (and Oracle as well) do
not have CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE as it does for VIEWs, and FUNCTIONs.
Anybody know?)

Anyway here's drop_table ():

CREATE or REPLACE function drop_table (varchar) returns varchar as '
DECLARE
tablename alias for $1;
cnt int4;
BEGIN
SELECT into cnt count(*) from pg_class where relname =
tablename::name;
if cnt > 0 then
execute \'DROP TABLE \' || tablename;
return tablename || \' DROPPED\';
end if;
return tablename || \' does not exist\';
END;'
language 'plpgsql' ;

And here's it's usage in an SQL script:

\set QUIET
\pset format unaligned
\pset tuples_only
\unset QUIET

select drop_table('sale');
CREATE TABLE sale ( ... );

Regards, DAvid

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