Drop table with PURGE option

When you drop a table, the Oracle server doesn't actually remove the table. Instead, it places the table into the recycle bin of the Oracle server, which means the space that the dropped table was holding still exists and the table can be recovered from the recycle bin by using FLASHBACK TABLE statement.

However, if you use this option, PURGE, with a sql statement when you drop a table, the oracle server immediately removes the table and the space the table is holding from a database.

Examples)

DROP TABLE dept80 PURGE;

* You cannot roll back a DROP TABLE statement with the PURGE clause, nor can you recover the table if you drop it with the PURGE clause.

** This feature was not available in the earlier release. (ONLY for Oracle 10g)