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TRUNCATE

TRUNCATE — empty a table or set of tables

Synopsis

TRUNCATE [ TABLE ] [ ONLY ]name [ * ] [, ... ]    [ RESTART IDENTITY | CONTINUE IDENTITY ] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

TRUNCATE quickly removes all rows from a set of tables. It has the same effect as an unqualifiedDELETE on each table, but since it does not actually scan the tables it is faster. Furthermore, it reclaims disk space immediately, rather than requiring a subsequentVACUUM operation. This is most useful on large tables.

Parameters

Notes

You must have theTRUNCATE privilege on a table to truncate it.

TRUNCATE acquires anACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on each table it operates on, which blocks all other concurrent operations on the table. WhenRESTART IDENTITY is specified, any sequences that are to be restarted are likewise locked exclusively. If concurrent access to a table is required, then theDELETE command should be used instead.

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. TheCASCADE option can be used to automatically include all dependent tables — but be very careful when using this option, or else you might lose data you did not intend to!

TRUNCATE will not fire anyON DELETE triggers that might exist for the tables. But it will fireON TRUNCATE triggers. IfON TRUNCATE triggers are defined for any of the tables, then allBEFORE TRUNCATE triggers are fired before any truncation happens, and allAFTER TRUNCATE triggers are fired after the last truncation is performed and any sequences are reset. The triggers will fire in the order that the tables are to be processed (first those listed in the command, and then any that were added due to cascading).

TRUNCATE is not MVCC-safe. After truncation, the table will appear empty to concurrent transactions, if they are using a snapshot taken before the truncation occurred. SeeSection 13.5 for more details.

TRUNCATE is transaction-safe with respect to the data in the tables: the truncation will be safely rolled back if the surrounding transaction does not commit.

WhenRESTART IDENTITY is specified, the impliedALTER SEQUENCE RESTART operations are also done transactionally; that is, they will be rolled back if the surrounding transaction does not commit. Be aware that if any additional sequence operations are done on the restarted sequences before the transaction rolls back, the effects of these operations on the sequences will be rolled back, but not their effects oncurrval(); that is, after the transactioncurrval() will continue to reflect the last sequence value obtained inside the failed transaction, even though the sequence itself may no longer be consistent with that. This is similar to the usual behavior ofcurrval() after a failed transaction.

TRUNCATE is not currently supported for foreign tables. This implies that if a specified table has any descendant tables that are foreign, the command will fail.

Examples

Truncate the tablesbigtable andfattable:

TRUNCATE bigtable, fattable;

The same, and also reset any associated sequence generators:

TRUNCATE bigtable, fattable RESTART IDENTITY;

Truncate the tableothertable, and cascade to any tables that referenceothertable via foreign-key constraints:

TRUNCATE othertable CASCADE;

Compatibility

The SQL:2008 standard includes aTRUNCATE command with the syntaxTRUNCATE TABLEtablename. The clausesCONTINUE IDENTITY/RESTART IDENTITY also appear in that standard, but have slightly different though related meanings. Some of the concurrency behavior of this command is left implementation-defined by the standard, so the above notes should be considered and compared with other implementations if necessary.

See Also