MySQL: how to drop multiple tables using single query?

Question

I want to drop multiple tables with ease without actually listing the table names in the drop query and the tables to be deleted have prefix say \'wp_\'

Answer 1

Simple solution without risk of error:

mysqldump create a file that contains DROP command like

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `wp_matable`;

a 'grep' with "DROP TABLE wp_" give us the commands to execute

so drop is made by theses trhee lines (you can edit drop.sql to check which tables would be dropped before)

mysqldump -u user -p database > dump.sql 
grep "DROP TABLE `wp_" dump.sql > drop.sql
mysql -u user -p database < drop.sql