TRUNCATE Table

TRUNCATE TABLE students; deletes every row fast and resets AUTO_INCREMENT. The table structure stays. It is DDL in MySQL — you usually cannot ROLLBACK a truncate like a DELETE in a transaction (engine/version details aside: treat TRUNCATE as ‘gone’).

DELETE FROM students; also removes all rows but logs each row, fires DELETE triggers, and can be rolled back in a transaction. Use DELETE when you need WHERE, triggers, or rollback. Use TRUNCATE when you want an empty table quickly in practice.

Trap: TRUNCATE on a table that other tables reference with FOREIGN KEY — InnoDB may refuse. Trap: thinking TRUNCATE is the same as DROP TABLE (DROP removes the table itself).

On the example next to this theory: TRUNCATE Table — dELETE removes matching rows. TRUNCATE clears a whole table faster (MySQL).