DROP IF EXISTS VS DROP?

Question

Can someone tell me if there is any difference between

DROP IF EXISTS [TABLE_NAME]

DROP [TABLE_NAME]

I am askin

Answer 1

It is not what is asked directly. But looking for how to do drop tables properly, I stumbled over this question, as I guess many others do too.

From SQL Server 2016+ you can use

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS dbo.Table

For SQL Server <2016 what I do is the following for a permanent table

IF OBJECT_ID('dbo.Table', 'U') IS NOT NULL 
  DROP TABLE dbo.Table; 

Or this, for a temporary table

IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb.dbo.#T', 'U') IS NOT NULL
  DROP TABLE #T;