How do I drop all tables in psql (PostgreSQL interactive terminal) that starts with a common word?

Question

How do I drop all tables whose name start with, say, doors_? Can I do some sort of regex using the drop table command?

I prefer not writing

Answer 1

I normally use one query to generate the DDL commands for me based on some of the metadata tables and then run those commands manually. For example:

SELECT 'DROP TABLE ' || tablename || ';' FROM pg_tables
WHERE tablename LIKE 'prefix%' AND schemaname = 'public';

This will return a bunch of DROP TABLE xxx; queries, which I simply copy&paste to the console. While you could add some code to execute them automatically, I prefer to run them on my own.