↑↓ select ↵ open ⌫ change scope Open full search

PG.CENTER connects PostgreSQL documentation, reference, and ecosystem knowledge. Maintained by Pigsty.

Supported versions: Current (18) / 17 / 16 / 15 / 14
Development versions: 19 / devel
Unsupported versions: 13 / 12 / 11 / 10 / 9.6 / 9.5 / 9.4 / 9.3 / 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.0 / 8.4 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.1 / 8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3 / 7.2 / 7.1
Historical version. PostgreSQL 8.1 reached end of support in November 2010. See the current version for supported releases.
PostgreSQL 8.1.23 Documentation
Prev Fast Backward Fast Forward Next

TRUNCATE

Name

TRUNCATE -- empty a table or set of tables

Synopsis

TRUNCATE [ TABLE ] name [, ...]

Description

TRUNCATE quickly removes all rows from a set of tables. It has the same effect as an unqualified DELETE on each table, but since it does not actually scan the tables it is faster. This is most useful on large tables.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a table to be truncated.

Notes

Only the owner of a table may TRUNCATE it.

TRUNCATE cannot be used on a table that has foreign-key references from other tables, unless all such tables are also truncated in the same command. Checking validity in such cases would require table scans, and the whole point is not to do one.

TRUNCATE will not run any user-defined ON DELETE triggers that might exist for the tables.

Examples

Truncate the tables bigtable and fattable:

TRUNCATE TABLE bigtable, fattable;

Compatibility

There is no TRUNCATE command in the SQL standard.

Prev Home Next
START TRANSACTION Up UNLISTEN

Report a documentation issue

Read the upstream documentation. For corrections, first check the current version.