Deleting duplicate rows - sqlite

Question

I am learning SQLite and constructed a line which I thought would delete dups but it deletes all rows instead.
DELETE from tablename WHERE rowid not in (SELECT distinct(timestamp) from tablename);
I expected this to delete rows with a duplicate (leaving one). I know I can simply create a new table with the distinct rows, but why does what I have done not work? Thanks

Answer 1

If timestamp is a column in the table and this is what you want to compare so to delete duplicates then do this:
delete from tablename
where exists (
select 1 from tablename t
where t.rowid < tablename.rowid and t.timestamp = tablename.timestamp
)

Answer 2

With recent versions of sqlite, the following is an alternative:
DELETE FROM tablename
WHERE rowid IN (SELECT rowid
FROM (SELECT rowid, row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY timestamp) AS rownum
FROM tablename)
WHERE rownum >= 2);

Answer 3

why does what I have done not work?
Consider the WHERE condition:
rowid not in (SELECT distinct(timestamp) from tablename)
The simple answer is that you are not comparing data in the same columns, nor are they columns with the same type of data. rowid is an automatically-incremented integer column and I assume that timestamp column is either a numeric or string column containing time values, or perhaps custom-generated sequential numeric values. Because rowid likely never matches a value in timestamp, then the NOT IN operation will always return true. Thus each row of the table will be deleted.
SQL is rather explicit and so there are no hidden/mysterious column comparisons. It will not automatically compare the rowid's from one query with another. Notice that the various alternative statements do something to distinguish rows with duplicate key values (timestamp in your case), either by direct comparison between main query and subquery, or using windowing functions to uniquely label rows with duplicate values, etc.
Just for kicks, here's another alternative that uses NOT IN like your original code.
DELETE FROM tablename
WHERE rowid NOT IN (
SELECT max(t.rowid) FROM tablename t
GROUP BY t.timestamp )
First notice that this is comparing rowid with max(t.rowid), values which derive from the same column.
Because the subquery groups on t.timestamp, the aggregate function max() will return the greatest/last t.rowid separately for each set of rows with the same t.timestamp value. The resultant list will exclude t.rowid values that are less than the maximum. Thus, the NOT IN operation will not find those lesser values and will return true so they will be deleted.
It also uses basic SQL (no window functions... the OVER keyword). It will likely be more efficient than the alternative that references the outer query from the subquery, because this statement can execute the subquery just once and then use an efficient index to match individual records... it doesn't need to rerun the query for each row. For that matter, it should also be more efficient than the windowing function, because the window partition essentially "groups" on the partitioned columns, but must then execute the windowing function for each row, an extra step not present in the basic aggregate query. Efficiency is not always critical, but something important to consider.
By the way, the distinct keyword is not a function and does not need/accept parenthesis. It is a directive that applies to the entire select statement. The subquery is being interpreted as
SELECT DISTINCT (timestamp) FROM tablename
where DISTINCT is interpreted in isolation and the parenthesis are interpreted as a separate expression.
Update
These two queries will return the same data:
SELECT DISTINCT timestamp FROM tablename;
SELECT timestamp FROM tablename GROUP BY timestamp;
Both results eliminate duplicate rows from the output by showing only unique/distinct values, but neither has a "handle" (other data column) which indicates which rows to keep and which rows to eliminate. In other words, these queries return distinct values, but the results loose all relationship to the source rows and so have no use in specifying which source rows to delete (or keep). To understand better, you should run subqueries separately to inspect what they return so that you can understand and verify what data you're working with.
To make those queries useful, we need to do something to distinguish rows with duplicate key values. The rows need a "handle"--some other key value to select for either deleting or keeping those rows. Try this...
SELECT DISTINCT rowid, timestamp FROM tablename;
But that won't work, because it applies the DISTINCT keyword to ALL returned columns, but since rowid is already unique it will necessarily output each row separately and so there is no use to the query.
SELECT max(rowid), timestamp FROM tablename GROUP BY timestamp;
That query preserves the unique grouping, but provides just one rowid per timestamp as the "handle" to include/exclude for deletion.

Answer 4

try this
DELETE liens from liens where
id in
( SELECT * FROM (SELECT min(id) FROM liens group by lkey having count(*) > 1 ) AS c)
you can do this many times