UNLINK · Valkey

UNLINK

Asynchronously deletes one or more keys.

Usage

UNLINK key [key…]

Description

This command is very similar to DEL: it removes the specified keys. Just like DEL a key is ignored if it does not exist. However the command performs the actual memory reclaiming in a different thread, so it is not blocking, while DEL is. This is where the command name comes from: the command just unlinks the keys from the keyspace. The actual removal will happen later asynchronously.

Reply

Integer reply: the number of keys that were unlinked.

Complexity

O(1) for each key removed regardless of its size. Then the command does O(N) work in a different thread in order to reclaim memory, where N is the number of allocations the deleted objects where composed of.

ACL Categories

@fast @keyspace @write

Examples

127.0.0.1:6379> SET key1 "Hello"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> SET key2 "World"
OK
127.0.0.1:6379> UNLINK key1 key2 key3
(integer) 2

History

See also

COPY, DEL, DUMP, EXISTS, EXPIRE, EXPIREAT, EXPIRETIME, KEYS, MIGRATE, MOVE, OBJECT, OBJECT ENCODING, OBJECT FREQ, OBJECT HELP, OBJECT IDLETIME, OBJECT REFCOUNT, PERSIST, PEXPIRE, PEXPIREAT, PEXPIRETIME, PTTL, RANDOMKEY, RENAME, RENAMENX, RESTORE, SCAN, SORT, SORT_RO, TOUCH, TTL, TYPE, WAIT, WAITAOF.