Deleting a table is performed in 2 steps internally:

1. Table is cleared (similar to TRUNCATE)
2. All table files are removed from the table folder. All the external table files that were used by the table (such as wordforms, extensions or stopwords) are also deleted. Note that these external files are copied to the table folder when CREATE TABLE is used, so the original files specified in CREATE TABLE will not be deleted.

Deleting a table is possible only when the server is running in the RT mode. It is possible to delete RT tables, PQ tables and distributed tables.

When deleting a table via SQL, adding IF EXISTS can be used to delete the table only if it exists. If you try to delete a non-existing table with the IF EXISTS option, nothing happens.

When deleting a table via PHP, you can add an optional silent parameter which works the same as IF EXISTS.

The table can be emptied with a TRUNCATE TABLE SQL statement or with a truncate() PHP client function.

Here is the syntax for the SQL statement:

TRUNCATE TABLE table_name [WITH RECONFIGURE]

When this statement is executed, it clears the RT or distributed table completely. It disposes the in-memory data, unlinks all the table data files, and releases the associated binary logs.

For emptying a distributed table, use syntax without the with reconfigure option. Simply execute the standard TRUNCATE statement against your distributed table.

TRUNCATE TABLE distributed_table

NOTE: Emptying a distributed table requires Manticore Buddy. If it doesn't work, make sure Buddy is installed.

A table can also be emptied with DELETE FROM index WHERE id>0, but it's not recommended as it's slower than TRUNCATE.

When RECONFIGURE option is used new tokenization, morphology, and other text processing settings specified in the config take effect after the table gets cleared. In case the schema declaration in config is different from the table schema the new schema from config got applied after table get cleared.

NOTE: The RECONFIGURE option only makes sense in Plain mode, where it applies the settings from the configuration file. Note that TRUNCATE is only supported for RT tables, and the RECONFIGURE option can only be used with RT tables when Manticore is running in Plain mode.

With this option clearing and reconfiguring a table becomes one atomic operation.