title: Using ALTER to drop a column if it exists in MySQL
body: <p>How can ALTER be used to drop a column in a MySQL table if that column exists? </p>
  
  <p>I know I can use <code>ALTER TABLE my_table DROP COLUMN my_column</code>, but that will throw an error if <code>my_column</code> does not exist. Is there alternative syntax for dropping the column conditionally?</p>
  
  <p>I'm using MySQL version 4.0.18.</p>