Avoiding ORA-00955: name is already used by an existing object - sql

Question

I am creating the table as below in the sql file, which will be called everytime there is a new file to process. So everytime a new file comes, I will drop this table and create again and load. When I am calling this from shell script, this table gets dropped and created successfully, but along with this i get an error as below. Any idea how to avoid this.
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00955: name is already used by an existing object
Table Drop and create sql file :
DROP TABLE SCHEMA.TEMP_SOURCE;
CREATE TABLE SCHEMA.TEMP_SOURCE(
COL 1 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
COL 2 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
COL 3 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
);
/
EXIT;

Answer 1

ORA-00955: name is already used by an existing object
That's because, you have put a slash / in the end of the script.
);
/
Due to which, the previous statement in the buffer is executed again. Which means, the CREATE TABLE statement is executed twice.
Remove the slash from the end. The semi-colon is enough as statement terminator for individual queries.
This is how I would do:
SQL> BEGIN
2 EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE TEMP_SOURCE';
3 EXCEPTION
4 WHEN OTHERS THEN
5 IF SQLCODE != -942 THEN
6 RAISE;
7 END IF;
8 END;
9 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>
SQL> CREATE TABLE TEMP_SOURCE
2 (
3 COL_1 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
4 COL_2 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
5 COL_3 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR)
6 );
Table created.
SQL>
Having said that, you have multiple issues in the script.
COL 1 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
You cannot have a space in the column name. COL 1 is an invalid column name. You will get Invalid identifier error.
Another issue:
COL 3 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
);
There is an extra comma in the end of the column list.

Answer 2

Simply modify your script as below:
DROP TABLE SCHEMA.TEMP_SOURCE
/
CREATE TABLE SCHEMA.TEMP_SOURCE(
COL 1 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
COL 2 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
COL 3 VARCHAR2(30 CHAR),
)
/
EXIT;