I'm not sure if Chad's "brutal" comment was intended as a compliment, but I'll take it as such
Whoops - I didn't even think that might be taken as a complaint, it certainly wasn't meant that way. I was using it in the same way you might call a long, hard workout "brutal". It's good for you, you're glad it's over and you feel like you have conquered something. Thanks for assuming positive intent - there was definitely nothing negative intended there.
This is strange. I ran some tests as well, and I found that deleting all rows does free up most space, but not all. I also found that most space is released immediately, but there's also a bit released only after a second or so. And the most surprising is that the amount of unreleased space seems to depend on various factors I could not put my finger on - at one time, I consistently was left with about 200 KB or so after deleting (with a 10,000 row test); later when I tried again (but apparently not with the exact same table and data), I was consistently left with a mere 32KB.
Wow, that is interesting. I wonder what it is underneath that makes the difference. I'm cleaning up a lot of old data (horizontal and vertical), so this topic is quite opportune.
However, this is a bit off-topic here, as the QotD was not about reclaiming free space after deleting all or any rows from a table, but after deleting one column without removing any row.
Quite right. I'll take it elsewhere if I decide to pursue it. Thanks Hugo, and welcome back.
Chad