11.6. Unique Indexes
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## 11.6. Unique Indexes #

Indexes can also be used to enforce uniqueness of a column's value, or the uniqueness of the combined values of more than one column.

    CREATE UNIQUE INDEX name ON table (column [, ...]) [ NULLS [ NOT ] DISTINCT ];

Currently, only B-tree indexes can be declared unique.

When an index is declared unique, multiple table rows with equal indexed values are not allowed. By default, null values in a unique column are not considered equal, allowing multiple nulls in the column. The `NULLS NOT DISTINCT` option modifies this and causes the index to treat nulls as equal. A multicolumn unique index will only reject cases where all indexed columns are equal in multiple rows.

PostgreSQL automatically creates a unique index when a unique constraint or primary key is defined for a table. The index covers the columns that make up the primary key or unique constraint (a multicolumn index, if appropriate), and is the mechanism that enforces the constraint.

### Note

There's no need to manually create indexes on unique columns; doing so would just duplicate the automatically-created index.

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