DEL(3valkey)

✨ DEL — the manual page, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, welcome to del(3valkey), the Valkey Command Manual entry for literally the most satisfying command in the whole keyspace. yes we're doing this. 💅

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🌸 NAME 🌸

del — Deletes one or more keys. that's it. that's the whole vibe. goodbye key, you served. 🫶

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

DEL key [key...]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so the tea is: DEL removes the specified keys. boom. gone.

and if a key doesn't exist? it's just ignored. no error, no drama, no "umm excuse me where's the key" — it simply doesn't exist so there's nothing to delete and we move on. main character energy honestly. ✨

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🌈 REPLY 🌈

valkey-protocol(7) Integer reply: the number of keys that were removed. 👑

so if you hand it five keys and only two were real, you get 2. the imaginary ones get no credit. no cap.

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🦋 COMPLEXITY 🦋

this is the part where it gets slightly nerdy but stay with me:

• O(N) where N is the number of keys that will be removed.
• but WAIT — when a key you're removing holds a value that isn't a string, the individual complexity for that key is O(M), where M is the number of elements in the list, set, sorted set or hash. so like, yeeting a whole giant hash is more work than yeeting one little string, obviously.
• removing a single key that holds a string value is O(1). snappy. iconic. no thoughts head empty. ⭐

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🔥 ACL CATEGORIES 🔥

• @keyspace
• @slow
• @write

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🧚 HISTORY 🧚

• Available since: 1.0.0 — yeah she's been here since the beginning, an OG, a legend, a founding member of the group chat 💜

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👑 EXAMPLES 👑

127.0.0.1:6379> SET key1 "Hello"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> SET key2 "World"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> DEL key1 key2 key3
(integer) 2

see what happened there? we set key1 and key2, then asked DEL to remove key1, key2 and key3. key3 never existed so she got ignored, and the reply is (integer) 2 — two keys actually removed. ate. 🔥

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

like, go read these too, they're all part of the same little ecosystem bestie:

• copy(3valkey)
• dump(3valkey)
• exists(3valkey)
• expire(3valkey)
• expireat(3valkey)
• expiretime(3valkey)
• keys(3valkey)
• migrate(3valkey)
• move(3valkey)
• object(3valkey)
• object-encoding(3valkey)
• object-freq(3valkey)
• object-help(3valkey)
• object-idletime(3valkey)
• object-refcount(3valkey)
• persist(3valkey)
• pexpire(3valkey)
• pexpireat(3valkey)
• pexpiretime(3valkey)
• pttl(3valkey)
• randomkey(3valkey)
• rename(3valkey)
• renamenx(3valkey)
• restore(3valkey)
• scan(3valkey)
• sort(3valkey)
• sort_ro(3valkey)
• touch(3valkey)
• ttl(3valkey)
• type(3valkey)
• unlink(3valkey)
• wait(3valkey)
• waitaof(3valkey)

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💀 lowkey important: DEL is the classic, but if you're deleting something huge and you don't wanna block everything, maybe peek at her cousin unlink(3valkey) up there in the SEE ALSO. iykyk.

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okay that's the page!! this manual is from Valkey version 9.0.0, dated 2025-10-21, and it lives under the name DEL(3valkey). go forth and delete responsibly, bestie. mwah. 💖🎀🦋🌸