Oracle 10g. Drop tables

When dropping tables in Oracle 10g you find that they are not actually being dropped. This is a new feature where once a table is dropped it is put into a kind of recycle bin and appears like in the example below:

OBJECT_NAME
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIN$Fh4GKL2HF6HgRAADug5S0A==$0
BIN$Fh4HVxp+GAvgRAADug5S0A==$0

This is what is known as the flashback feature where you are able to retrieve lost data that has been accidentally dropped. There is more than one way of getting rid of these dropped tables. The first way is…to do nothing! The dropped tables do not release the tablespace, however, once the tablespace is needed the tables in the recycle bin are deleted on a first-in, first-out(FIFO) basis. The alternative is to manually purge the table, here is an example of how this is done:

PURGE TABLE "BIN$Fh4GKL2HF6HgRAADug5S0A==$0";