MySQL DELETE FROM with subquery as condition

For others that find this question looking to delete while using a subquery, I leave you this example for outsmarting MySQL (even if some people seem to think it cannot be done):

DELETE e.*
FROM tableE e
WHERE id IN (SELECT id
             FROM tableE
             WHERE arg = 1 AND foo = 'bar');

will give you an error:

ERROR 1093 (HY000): You can't specify target table 'e' for update in FROM clause

However this query:

DELETE e.*
FROM tableE e
WHERE id IN (SELECT id
             FROM (SELECT id
                   FROM tableE
                   WHERE arg = 1 AND foo = 'bar') x);

will work just fine:

Query OK, 1 row affected (3.91 sec)

Wrap your subquery up in an additional subquery (here named x) and MySQL will happily do what you ask.

The alias should be included after the DELETE keyword:

DELETE th
FROM term_hierarchy AS th
WHERE th.parent = 1015 AND th.tid IN 
(
    SELECT DISTINCT(th1.tid)
    FROM term_hierarchy AS th1
    INNER JOIN term_hierarchy AS th2 ON (th1.tid = th2.tid AND th2.parent != 1015)
    WHERE th1.parent = 1015
);