Schrödingers MySQL table: exists, yet it does not

Question

I am having the weirdest error of all.

Sometimes, when creating or altering tables, I get the \'table already exists\' error. However, DROP TABLE returns \'#1051 - u

Answer 1

This is an old question but I just hit the same issue and an answer in one of the related issues linked at the top was just what I needed and far less drastic than deleting files, tables, shutting down the server etc.

mysqladmin -uxxxxxx -pyyyyy flush-tables