Delete a row that does not have child rows

[guyfromfl]

What is the best way to remove rows from one table that does not have children in another table?  I want to go through all the table1 entries and if table2.table1id does not return anything, then delete table1's entry

 

table1:

id

<misc data>

 

table2:

id

table1id

<misc data>

 

So what I need is something like

DELETE FROM table1 where < COUNT(SELECT * FROM table1id) = 0

 

 

Another way to say it is I want to delete all the orders (table1) that do not have any line items (table2)...

[fenway]

A LEFT JOIN .. is NULL should suffice.