Postgres - How to drop all tables in a database except for 3

Question

I know that to drop a table in a database is as follows, but if I have a database that has over a dozen tables and I only need to keep 3 of them, am I able to delete all but the 3 with only one command?

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS c_note RESTRICT;

Answer 1

Yes, but you need to enumerate over all the tables you want to drop. There's no command to drop all but 3. So, if you had the following tables:

1. foo
2. bar
3. baz
4. narf
5. poit
6. troz

And you wanted to drop the first three and keep the last three, you would use the command:

 DROP TABLE foo, bar, baz;

If you know the tables all exist, there's no need for IF EXISTS, although it won't hurt. RESTRICT is also not needed -- that's the default (the opposite is CASCADE, where you also drop dependant objects).

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