Question about deleting where no matching record to join

[sKunKbad]

I've got a working delete query that removes rows where there is no match in another table. It works fine, but the example I found online made me wonder about something.

DELETE a
FROM table_a a
LEFT JOIN table_c c
ON c.id = a.id
WHERE c.id IS NULL

My question is about the first line, "DELETE a". Does that "a" make the query functionally different than leaving it out, like this:

DELETE
FROM table_a a
LEFT JOIN table_c c
ON c.id = a.id
WHERE c.id IS NULL

Are these two delete queries exactly the same for the intended use? I've just never seen somebody write a delete query like that (including that "a") before.

 

 

[benanamen]

the a and the C just shortcuts to the table names

[Jacques1]

The second query is syntactically invalid. See the manual for how to write a multi-table DELETE query.