TRUNCATE(7)

💅 TRUNCATE(7) — the "yeet every row" page

Okay bestie, so this is the TRUNCATE(7) page from the PostgreSQL 17.11 Documentation, and it's literally the glow-up your tables get when you want them empty but you don't wanna wait around. Let's get into it ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

TRUNCATE — empty a table or set of tables. That's it, that's the whole vibe. Poof, gone, no cap.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

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

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So TRUNCATE quickly removes all rows from a set of tables. It has the same effect as an unqualified DELETE on each table, but it doesn't actually scan the tables, so it's faster. Like, way faster. Main character energy fr.

And it reclaims disk space immediately, rather than needing a whole separate VACUUM operation afterwards. Which is most useful on large tables — the big girls 💅

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🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

• name — the name (optionally schema-qualified) of a table to truncate. If ONLY is specified before the table name, then only that table is truncated. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant tables (if any) get truncated. You can also optionally put * after the table name to explicitly say "yes bestie, include the descendant tables". No guessing games.
• RESTART IDENTITY — automatically restart sequences owned by columns of the truncated table(s). Fresh start, new you ✨
• CONTINUE IDENTITY — do not change the values of sequences. This is the default, so if you say nothing, this is what you get.
• 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. It's giving "and everyone they brought with them" 🫶
• 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. Polite, cautious, knows her boundaries.

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💀 NOTES 💀

Bestie, listen up, this part is important 👑

You must have the TRUNCATE privilege on a table to truncate it. No privilege, no poof.

TRUNCATE acquires an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on each table it operates on, which blocks all other concurrent operations on the table. So yeah, it's that girl who locks the whole bathroom. 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. Why? Because 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. Like, it does not discriminate, it simply goes.

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). Order matters, she's organized.

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 13.6 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. Yeah. It's a whole thing. 🙈

TRUNCATE can be used for foreign tables if supported by the foreign data wrapper, for instance, see postgres_fdw.

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

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;

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🍓 COMPATIBILITY 🍓

The SQL:2008 standard includes a TRUNCATE command with the syntax TRUNCATE TABLE tablename. The clauses 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. Standards, am I right? 💅

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

DELETE(7)

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Okay that's the whole page bestie 🫶 This was PostgreSQL 17.11, dated 2026, and honestly? Iconic. Now go empty those tables responsibly, and remember: CASCADE is not a toy 💖✨