title: Oracle: If Table Exists
body: <p>I'm writing some migration scripts for an Oracle database, and was hoping Oracle had something similar to MySQL's <code>IF EXISTS</code> construct.</p>
  
  <p>Specifically, whenever I want to drop a table in MySQL, I do something like</p>
  
  <pre><code>DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `table_name`;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This way, if the table doesn't exist, the <code>DROP</code> doesn't produce an error, and the script can continue.</p>
  
  <p>Does Oracle have a similar mechanism?  I realize I could use the following query to check if a table exists or not</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT * FROM dba_tables where table_name = 'table_name';
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but the syntax for tying that together with a <code>DROP</code> is escaping me.</p>