Meaning of "loops" in EXPLAIN ANALYSE output

Hi,

I have a query optimization problem and I have failed to find the part
of the Postgres docs that explains the meaning of the "loops" value in
the EXPLAIN ANALYSE output.

For example, my EXPLAIN ANALYSE output contains the following line:

Unique (cost=9775.21..10015.32 rows=1 width=8) (actual
time=264.889..264.889 rows=1 loops=791)

Does that mean that the entire operation took 264.889 ms, or that a
single iteration took that long? The time for the entire query would
suggest the latter interpretation but I'd like to rule out the
possibility that something else is causing the execution time to balloon.

Thanks,

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Aaron Bingham
Senior Software Engineer
Cenix BioScience GmbH
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