Re: BUG #16492: DROP VIEW IF EXISTS error

> the most likely effect of such a change is that we fix no scripts, while
> breaking any scripts that were dependent on the existing behavior.

As the documentation seems to always have said that "IF EXISTS" doesn't raise an error, there's no script that could get broken.

On the other side, currently I currently don't see a way of dropping a view or table without knowing its exact type.

So to drop a *view*, I need to be sure that there is no *table* with the same name. I have to check that first before using DROP. But that makes IF EXISTS more or less useless because I might just as well check whether the view exists and depending on the result either do a DROP or not.

> What I'd prefer to see, I think, is a command DROP RELATION [IF EXISTS]

If the already implemented DROPs behaved as documented, you'd not need an additional third statement. It'd be just identical to

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS
DROP VIEW IF EXISTS