DROP USER user [, user] ...

The DROP USER statement removes one or more MySQL accounts. To use it, you must have the global CREATE USER privilege or the DELETE privilege for the mysql database. Each account is named using the same format as for the GRANT statement; for example, 'jeffrey'@'localhost'. If you specify only the user name part of the account name, a host name part of '%' is used. For additional information about specifying account names, see Section 12.4.1.3, “GRANT Syntax”.

DROP USER as present in MySQL 5.0.0 removes only accounts that have no privileges. In MySQL 5.0.2, it was modified to remove account privileges as well. This means that the procedure for removing an account depends on your version of MySQL.

As of MySQL 5.0.2, you can remove an account and its privileges as follows:

DROP USER user;

The statement removes privilege rows for the account from all grant tables.

Before MySQL 5.0.2, DROP USER serves only to remove account rows from the user table for accounts that have no privileges. To remove a MySQL account completely (including all of its privileges), you should use the following procedure, performing these steps in the order shown:

DROP USER does not automatically delete or invalidate any database objects that the user created. This applies to tables, views, stored routines, and triggers.