Re: Followup Question about Vacuum from newsgroup

Now here's a little more information. I did this VACUUM on a table which
was NOT truncated. It has many additions and updates, but very few if any
deletions. In this case, did I have anything to gain with VACUUM? Does the
thing about the toast files still hold? same instructions below? Thanks
so much!

"Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote in message
news:21502(dot)1039988725(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us(dot)(dot)(dot)
> HT Levine <htlevine(at)ebates(dot)com> writes:
> > My suspicion is that there are pg_toast_xxxxx files left in the base
> > directory? If I identify them with oid2name (waiting for netops to
build
> > that) is it ok to just delete those toast files?
>
> No.
>
> In pre-7.3 releases, TRUNCATE TABLE did not automatically truncate the
> associated TOAST table, which was a nasty oversight :-(. However, those
> releases would also allow you to manually truncate a TOAST table (which
> was also a bad oversight, but rather fortunate in hindsight). The bad
> news is that they think TOAST tables are system tables --- so the only
> way to fully truncate a toastable table in 7.2 is
>
> TRUNCATE TABLE toast-table-for-foo;
> TRUNCATE TABLE foo;
>
> in a standalone backend started with -O option :-(
>
> This mess is fixed in 7.3 --- TRUNCATE automatically truncates the toast
> table along with its master, when you truncate the master.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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