Check if a MySQL table exists

Using show tables

The easiest way is using the "show tables" function. If your database (called "test" in this example) had three tables name "test1", "test2" and "another_test", running "show tables" would display this:

You can use show tables like this to see if a single table exists:

mysql> show tables like "test1";

which would return:


If you ran show tables on a table that didn't exist you would get this:

mysql> show tables like "test3";
Empty set (0.01 sec)