How to handle ORA-00942: table or view does not exist

Question

Hii All,
I'm trying to drop a table dynamically irrespective of its existence in a procedure. Its working fine when table exists but when table doesn't exist I'm facing following error
ORA-00942: table or view does not existI made use of pragma exception_init and modified my code as below
Create or replace Procedure sp_FSASA_FEEDUPLOAD_process
           p_test_dir               in     varchar2,
           p_feed_file_name     in     varchar2
is
          l_exttable_str varchar2(32000) ;
          l_log_file constant varchar2(200) := 'logfile_rgh.log';
          l_table_doesnt_exist Exception;
          pragma exception_init(l_table_doesnt_exist,-00492);
Begin
          Begin
               execute immediate 'drop table FSASA_FEEDUPLOAD_EXT purge' ;
          Exception
                    when l_table_doesnt_exist then
                         null;
          End;
          l_exttable_str := 'Create table FSASA_FEEDUPLOAD_EXT ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' ( ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Category_No                    varchar2(1), ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Financial_Category          varchar2(300), ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' GFCID                         number, ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Balance                         number(34,14), ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Refernce_no                    varchar2(20), ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Account_no                    varchar2(20), ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' ce_trans_id                    varchar2(20) ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' ) ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Organization external ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' ( ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' type                    oracle_loader ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' default directory      '||p_test_dir;
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' Access parameters ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' ( ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||'  records delimited by newline ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||'BADFILE '||q'[']'||p_test_dir||q'[']'||':'||q'[']'||'feed.bad '||q'[']' ;
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||'LOGFILE '||q'[']'||p_test_dir||q'[']'||':'||q'[']'||':feed.log '||q'[']' ;
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||q'[FIELDS TERMINATED BY X'09']';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' missing field values are null ';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||')location('||q'[']'||p_feed_file_name||q'[']';
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||')' ;
          l_exttable_str := l_exttable_str||' )Reject limit unlimited ';
          dbg_print(l_log_file,'l_exttable_str : '||l_exttable_str);
          execute immediate l_exttable_str;
End;But still I'm unable to get rid of it. Pls help me.
1)I need to drop it as I need to immediately create table with different file name and from different path.
2)The last thing I don't like to do is to check the table name in USER_OBJECTS and then drop.
3)Also suggest me whether creating an external table dynamically is correct approach or not.
4)Till now we were using utl_file for reading feed file but I'm much interested in using EXTERNAL TABLE concept.
5)As the filename and path gets changed I need to create my external table at runtime.
please suggest me whether I can alter my filename and path at runtime

Answer 1

You will need to use WHEN OTHERS EXCEPTION handler which is not a good idea to do so if you dont handle the same approprialtly then the exception would go un-noticed:
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  begin
  2  execute immediate 'drop table my_Test';
  3  exception
  4  when others then
  5  dbms_output.put_line(SQLCODE||SQLERRM);
  6* end;
SQL> /
-942ORA-00942: table or view does not exist
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>