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Use UNLINK to delete keys without freeing their memory in the foreground. The keys are removed from the keyspace immediately, so from a client’s point of view they are gone as soon as the command returns, but the memory of large values is reclaimed by a background thread. That makes it a safer alternative to DEL for collections with many elements, where freeing memory synchronously can block the server for a noticeable time. The reply counts the keys that existed.

Syntax

Arguments

Response

The reply reports the result of the operation. Error replies have the same shape in RESP2 and RESP3 and are surfaced as exceptions by the SDKs below.
Client libraries often decode bulk strings, maps, sets, and numeric strings into language-native values. The table describes the Redis wire reply.

Examples

TCP examples use the TLS REDIS_URL from the Upstash console. REST examples use UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL and UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN.

Related topics

UNLINKOverview