Does CLONE TABLE in Databricks delete the target table before cloning?

Question

The documentation does not make it clear and we can't adequately test this:

Does CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE 'x' DEEP CLONE 'y' synchronize two pre-existing Delta tables or does it delete the target and recreate it from the source?

Answer 1

It will do the copying of only data that were added since previous clone, it won’t delete the target before copying. That’s one of the reasons why it’s very good for things like backing up the data.

Create or replace are related to the metastore operations as explained in the docs.