cannot remove column + no error msg

Hi all,

sorry for the clutter, but cannot find a good answer to this problem in
the mailinglist archives:

If I execute either of both commands (I run postgresql 8.1.4 on Ubuntu
GNU/linux):

# ALTER TABLE table_name DELETE COLUMN column
# ALTER TABLE table_name DROP COLUMN column

nothing happens... if I do

# \d table_name,

all columns are still nicely present, like nothing happened at all.

In the pgsql-docs, I found that columns are not physically removed but
made only unvisible to SQL commands. However, I DO want to physically
remove those columns, since they are empty anyway. But apparently no way
how to do it. Does anybody knows a way how to proceed?

Second question is related to that. If I type any bogus (e.g.
"sflkjdslkfj") onto the psql commandline, PostgreSQL remains silent.
This is nice in some cases, but is there a way to let it do some error
checking on the bogus I type? I am not used to commandlines that just
swallow text and don't warn for any errors, giving me the idea that the
it is apparently correct. Anybody any idea to change some configuration
parameters?

thanks in advance,
Bram