TRUNCATE — empty a table or set of tables
TRUNCATE [ TABLE ] [ ONLY ] name
[ * ] [, ... ]
[ RESTART IDENTITY | CONTINUE IDENTITY ] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]
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. Furthermore, it reclaims disk space
immediately, rather than requiring a subsequent VACUUM
operation. This is most useful on large tables.
name
The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a table to truncate.
If ONLY
is specified before the table name, only that table
is truncated. If ONLY
is not specified, the table and all
its descendant tables (if any) are truncated. Optionally, *
can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that
descendant tables are included.
RESTART IDENTITY
Automatically restart sequences owned by columns of the truncated table(s).
CONTINUE IDENTITY
Do not change the values of sequences. This is the default.
CASCADE
Automatically truncate all tables that have foreign-key references
to any of the named tables, or to any tables added to the group
due to CASCADE
.
RESTRICT
Refuse to truncate if any of the tables have foreign-key references from tables that are not listed in the command. This is the default.
You must have the TRUNCATE
privilege on a table
to truncate it.
TRUNCATE
acquires an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE
lock on each
table it operates on, which blocks all other concurrent operations
on the table. When RESTART IDENTITY
is specified, any
sequences that are to be restarted are likewise locked exclusively.
If concurrent access to a table is required, then
the DELETE
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. The CASCADE
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!
Note in particular that when the table to be truncated is a partition,
siblings partitions are left untouched, but cascading occurs to all
referencing tables and all their partitions with no distinction.
TRUNCATE
will not fire any ON DELETE
triggers that might exist for the tables. But it will fire
ON TRUNCATE
triggers.
If ON TRUNCATE
triggers are defined for any of
the tables, then all BEFORE TRUNCATE
triggers are
fired before any truncation happens, and all AFTER
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.
See Section 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.
When RESTART IDENTITY
is specified, the implied
ALTER 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 on currval()
;
that is, after the transaction currval()
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 of currval()
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.
Truncate the tables bigtable
and
fattable
:
TRUNCATE bigtable, fattable;
The same, and also reset any associated sequence generators:
TRUNCATE bigtable, fattable RESTART IDENTITY;
Truncate the table othertable
, and cascade to any tables
that reference othertable
via foreign-key
constraints:
TRUNCATE othertable CASCADE;
The SQL:2008 standard includes a TRUNCATE
command
with the syntax TRUNCATE TABLE
. The clauses
tablename
CONTINUE 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.