To remove a table from database, the DROP statement must be used, and it usually comes with flags that are used to guide the removal syntax.

Syntax

DROP [TEMPORARY] TABLE [IF EXISTS] table_name [, table_name] ...

The flag IF EXISTS is a preventive flag to avoid errors if table doesn't exist, while the flag TEMPORARY allows us to remove temporary tables only which are a way of preventing us from dropping tables permanently when we maybe don't really want it.

As any other statements, DROP statement may be used in conjunction with other flags, operators or clause. For instance it may be used with the LIKE operator as shown here:

DROP TABLE LIKE '%table%';

Here the MySQL server will drop all tables that contain pattern (name) table inside, therefore deleting table, table_name, 1table, tables and all others that exists within that database.