In commands like the where the DROP clause is used

ALTER TABLE DROP <column>

and

ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN <column>

are both accepted.

Are there any commands in which the COLUMN keyword is not optional or is it optional everywhere?

CodePudding user response：

From MySQL docs

The word COLUMN is optional and can be omitted, except for RENAME COLUMN (to distinguish a column-renaming operation from the RENAME table-renaming operation).

CodePudding user response：

It is clear in the syntax reference where the COLUMN keyword is optional:

 | DROP [COLUMN] col_name

The square-brackets notation in the syntax reference means that the word inside the brackets is optional. See the linked documentation page for other cases of optional keywords.