Truncation is the process of shortening something by removing part of it. It can be done deliberately or accidentally, and is often used in computer science to refer to types of data or variables, such as floating point numbers and strings. Truncating a board that is too long can be done with an electric saw, a chainsaw, or even a karate kick. Truncating information by deleting data at the end is sometimes referred to as pruning or trimming.
It can be done to conserve memory or simplify the representation of a numerical value. It can also happen accidentally, for example, when a network transmission is unexpectedly interrupted by a hardware or software failure. The TRUNCATE TABLE statement removes all rows from a table, but the structure of the table and its columns, constraints, indexes, etc. are maintained.
To delete the table definition in addition to its data, use the DROP TABLE statement.
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