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The DELETE statement

DELETE FROM database WHERE column='condition' [LIMIT n]

Similarly to the 'INSERT' statement, the 'DELETE' syntax is very straight-forward and easy to understand. However, this command can quite obviously be very destructive which is why if you're only deleting a single row, it's best to use the 'LIMIT' one the end of the statement.

The first part 'DELETE FROM' simply tells the server that we're going to remove something from the database. The database is specified (in replacement of 'database').


WHERE column='condition'

The second part tells the server exactly what to delete. And thirdly and as mentioned earlier, it is always a good idea to limit a delete command as to not delete the entire database, so we add a 'LIMIT' command. For eaxmple, 'LIMIT 2' will only delete the first two rows it comes across.

A real life example:

DELETE FROM members WHERE username='michel9' LIMIT 1