MySQL: how to drop multiple tables using single query?

Question

I want to drop multiple tables with ease without actually listing the table names in the drop query and the tables to be deleted have prefix say 'wp_'

Answer 1

I've used a query very similar to Angelin's. In case you have more than a few tables, one has to increase the max length of group_concat. Otherwise the query will barf on the truncated string that group_concat returns.

This is my 10 cents:

-- Increase memory to avoid truncating string, adjust according to your needs
SET group_concat_max_len = 1024 * 1024 * 10;
-- Generate drop command and assign to variable
SELECT CONCAT('DROP TABLE ',GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT(table_schema,'.',table_name)),';') INTO @dropcmd FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema='databasename' AND table_name LIKE 'my_table%';
-- Drop tables
PREPARE str FROM @dropcmd; EXECUTE str; DEALLOCATE PREPARE str;

Answer 2

Just sharing one of the solutions:

mysql> SELECT CONCAT( "DROP TABLE ",
GROUP_CONCAT(TABLE_NAME) ) AS stmt

FROM information_schema.TABLES

WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = "your_db_name" AND TABLE_NAME LIKE "ur condition" into outfile '/tmp/a.txt';

mysql> source /tmp/a.txt;