TRUNCATE [TABLE] tbl_name
TRUNCATE TABLE
empties a table completely. It requires the DROP
privilege. Logically, TRUNCATE TABLE
is similar to a DELETE
statement that deletes all rows, or a sequence of DROP TABLE
and CREATE TABLE
statements.
To achieve high performance, TRUNCATE TABLE
bypasses the DML method of deleting data. Thus, it does not cause ON DELETE
triggers to fire, it cannot be performed for InnoDB
tables with parent-child foreign key relationships, and it cannot be rolled back like a DML operation. However, TRUNCATE TABLE
operations on tables that use an atomic DDL-supported storage engine are either fully committed or rolled back if the server halts during their operation. For more information, see Section 15.1.1, “Atomic Data Definition Statement Support”.
Although TRUNCATE TABLE
is similar to DELETE
, it is classified as a DDL statement rather than a DML statement. It differs from DELETE
in the following ways:
-
Truncate operations drop and re-create the table, which is much faster than deleting rows one by one, particularly for large tables.
-
Truncate operations cause an implicit commit, and so cannot be rolled back. See Section 15.3.3, “Statements That Cause an Implicit Commit”.
-
Truncation operations cannot be performed if the session holds an active table lock.
-
TRUNCATE TABLE
fails for anInnoDB
table orNDB
table if there are anyFOREIGN KEY
constraints from other tables that reference the table. Foreign key constraints between columns of the same table are permitted. -
Truncation operations do not return a meaningful value for the number of deleted rows. The usual result is “0 rows affected,” which should be interpreted as “no information.”
-
As long as the table definition is valid, the table can be re-created as an empty table with
TRUNCATE TABLE
, even if the data or index files have become corrupted. -
Any
AUTO_INCREMENT
value is reset to its start value. This is true even forMyISAM
andInnoDB
, which normally do not reuse sequence values. -
When used with partitioned tables,
TRUNCATE TABLE
preserves the partitioning; that is, the data and index files are dropped and re-created, while the partition definitions are unaffected. -
The
TRUNCATE TABLE
statement does not invokeON DELETE
triggers. -
Truncating a corrupted
InnoDB
table is supported.
TRUNCATE TABLE
is treated for purposes of binary logging and replication as DDL rather than DML, and is always logged as a statement.
TRUNCATE TABLE
for a table closes all handlers for the table that were opened with HANDLER OPEN
.
TRUNCATE TABLE
can be used with Performance Schema summary tables, but the effect is to reset the summary columns to 0 or NULL
, not to remove rows. See Section 29.12.20, “Performance Schema Summary Tables”.
Truncating an InnoDB
table that resides in a file-per-table tablespace drops the existing tablespace and creates a new one. If the tablespace was created with an earlier version and resides in an unknown directory, InnoDB
creates the new tablespace in the default location and writes the following warning to the error log: The DATA DIRECTORY location must be in a known directory. The DATA DIRECTORY location will be ignored and the file will be put into the default datadir location. Known directories are those defined by the datadir
, innodb_data_home_dir
, and innodb_directories
variables. To have TRUNCATE TABLE
create the tablespace in its current location, add the directory to the innodb_directories
setting before running TRUNCATE TABLE
.