Re: HELP! (AKA Those whacky users...)

In article <4a9mqn$7sn_at_punch.dot.state.ny.us> tking_at_gw.dot.state.ny.us (Tim King) writes:
>
> Thanks to all who responded via the service and email. The solution expressed
> herein was pretty much the general consensus. So I tried it, using both
> single- and double-quoted strings (ie: drop table "apparent_table_name ";).
> The results were:
> Single quotes: ORA-00903: invalid table name
> Double quotes: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist
> Interesting note - the messages returned by the single-quote attempt also
> returned the quotes in the statement reiteration. The double-quote attempt
> reiterated the statement with the quotes stripped out.
> Is there maybe something in our SQL*Plus setup that's defeating the double
> quote?!
> I know this sounds messy, but has anyone attacked such a problem by DELETE-ing
> FROM the underlying system tables using, say, rowid or some other 'back-door'
> method?
> Another interesting note (to me, anyway): The dump() function has revealed
> that the trailing character is character 64. On the IBM VM, this would be
> EBCDIC 64, or hex 40, or a space, or so I'm told. Maybe I've got the wrong
> 'space'?!
> Thanks again, and if anyone has any other (fit to print) suggestions, I'm
> listening!

Normally Oracle object names are case-insensitive but when you specify a database object in quotes, that name becomes case sensitive. So you probably need to do

SQL> drop table "APPARENT_TABLE_NAME ";

For the really adventurous, you may want to try updating the table name in the sys table tab$ itself. Of course, you need dba privilege and it's also at your own risk.

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 Alvin W. Law ........................................... Oracle Corporation
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