On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 8:31 PM, Craig Ringer
<craig@postnewspapers.com.au> wrote:
> On 13/11/2009 2:29 PM, Dave Crooke wrote:
>
>> Beware that VACUUM FULL locks an entire table at a time :-)
>
> ... and often bloats its indexes horribly. Use CLUSTER instead if you
> need to chop a table that's massively bloated down to size; it'll be
> much faster, and shouldn't leave the indexes in a mess.
>
> I increasingly wonder what the purpose of VACUUM FULL in its current
> form is.
There's been talk of removing it. It's almost historical in nature
now, but there are apparently one or two situations, like when you're
almost out of space, that vacuum full can handle that dumping reload
or cluster or whatnot can't do without more extra space.