REVOKE

Description

The REVOKE command revokes previously granted privileges from one or more users or groups of users. The key word PUBLIC refers to the implicitly defined group of all users.

See the description of the GRANT command for the meaning of the privilege types.

Note that any particular user will have the sum of privileges granted directly to him, privileges granted to any group he is presently a member of, and privileges granted to PUBLIC. Thus, for example, revoking SELECT privilege from PUBLIC does not necessarily mean that all users have lost SELECT privilege on the object: those who have it granted directly or via a group will still have it.

If GRANT OPTION FOR is specified, only the grant option for the privilege is revoked, not the privilege itself. Otherwise, both the privilege and the grant option are revoked.

If a user holds a privilege with grant option and has granted it to other users then the privileges held by those other users are called dependent privileges. If the privilege or the grant option held by the first user is being revoked and dependent privileges exist, those dependent privileges are also revoked if CASCADE is specified, else the revoke action will fail. This recursive revocation only affects privileges that were granted through a chain of users that is traceable to the user that is the subject of this REVOKE command. Thus, the affected users may effectively keep the privilege if it was also granted through other users.

Notes

Use psql's \z command to display the privileges granted on existing objects. See GRANT for information about the format.

A user can only revoke privileges that were granted directly by that user. If, for example, user A has granted a privilege with grant option to user B, and user B has in turned granted it to user C, then user A cannot revoke the privilege directly from C. Instead, user A could revoke the grant option from user B and use the CASCADE option so that the privilege is in turn revoked from user C. For another example, if both A and B have granted the same privilege to C, A can revoke his own grant but not B's grant, so C will still effectively have the privilege.

When a non-owner of an object attempts to REVOKE privileges on the object, the command will fail outright if the user has no privileges whatsoever on the object. As long as some privilege is available, the command will proceed, but it will revoke only those privileges for which the user has grant options. The REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES forms will issue a warning message if no grant options are held, while the other forms will issue a warning if grant options for any of the privileges specifically named in the command are not held. (In principle these statements apply to the object owner as well, but since the owner is always treated as holding all grant options, the cases can never occur.)

If a superuser chooses to issue a GRANT or REVOKE command, the command is performed as though it were issued by the owner of the affected object. Since all privileges ultimately come from the object owner (possibly indirectly via chains of grant options), it is possible for a superuser to revoke all privileges, but this may require use of CASCADE as stated above.

Examples

Revoke insert privilege for the public on table films:

REVOKE INSERT ON films FROM PUBLIC;

Revoke all privileges from user manuel on view kinds:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON kinds FROM manuel;

Note that this actually means "revoke all privileges that I granted".

Compatibility

The compatibility notes of the GRANT command apply analogously to REVOKE. The syntax summary is:

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ] privileges
    ON object [ ( column [, ...] ) ]
    FROM { PUBLIC | username [, ...] }
    { RESTRICT | CASCADE }

One of RESTRICT or CASCADE is required according to the standard, but PostgreSQL assumes RESTRICT by default.

See Also

GRANT