How to drop multiple tables in PostgreSQL using a wildcard

Question

When working with partitions, there is often a need to delete all partitions at once.

However

DROP TABLE tablename*

Does not work.

Answer 1

I've always felt way more comfortable creating a sql script I can review and test before I run it than relying on getting the plpgsql just right so it doesn't blow away my database. Something simple in bash that selects the tablenames from the catalog, then creates the drop statements for me. So for 8.4.x you'd get this basic query:

SELECT 'drop table '||n.nspname ||'.'|| c.relname||';' as "Name" 
FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c
     LEFT JOIN pg_catalog.pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace
WHERE c.relkind IN ('r','v','S','')
     AND n.nspname <> 'pg_catalog'
     AND n.nspname <> 'information_schema'
     AND n.nspname !~ '^pg_toast'
AND pg_catalog.pg_table_is_visible(c.oid);

Which you can add a where clause to. (where c.relname ilike 'bubba%')

Output looks like this:

         Name          
-----------------------
 drop table public.a1;
 drop table public.a2;

So, save that to a .sql file and run it with psql -f filename.sql