Difference Between Drop And Drop Purge In Oracle

Normally, a table is moved into the recycle bin (as of Oracle 10g), if it is dropped. However, if the purge modifier is specified as well, the table is unrecoverably (entirely) dropped from the database.

Oracle Database 10g introduces a new feature for dropping tables. When you drop a table, the database does not immediately release the space associated with the table. Rather, the database renames the table and places it in a recycle bin, where it can later be recovered with the FLASHBACK TABLE statement if you find that you dropped the table in error. If you want to immediately release the space associated with the table at the time you issue the DROP TABLE statement, then include the PURGE clause as follows. DROP TABLE employees PURGE; Specify PURGE only if you want to drop the table and release the space associated with it in a single step. If you specify PURGE, then the database does not place the table and its dependent objects into the recycle bin. NOTE: You cannot roll back a DROP TABLE statement with the PURGE clause, and you cannot recover the table if you drop it with the PURGE clause. This feature was not available in earlier releases.