dumping SHOW TABLES to a variable?

I'd like to store the results of SHOW TABLES in a variable @a and then
be able to do somethng like DROP TABLE @a. (ie. I'd like to be able to
delete all tables matching a specified pattern).

Is it possible without having to use some external programming language
construct?

yawnmoth wrote:
> I'd like to store the results of SHOW TABLES in a variable @a and then
> be able to do somethng like DROP TABLE @a. (ie. I'd like to be able to
> delete all tables matching a specified pattern).
>
> Is it possible without having to use some external programming language
> construct?
>

Unfortunately, you can't.
If you are using MySQL 5.0 or later, you can get information about tables (and
many other things from the INFORMATION_SCHEMA)

For example, the equivalent of SHOW TABLES is

SELECT table_name from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA='database_name';

See the manual:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...on-schema.html

and an introductory article:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/...ictionary.html

ciao
gmax

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