How is the “replace” usage in the “update” statement in MySQL?

In MySQL, the UPDATE statement is used to update data in a table, while the REPLACE statement is used to replace data in a table.

The syntax of the UPDATE statement is as follows:

UPDATE table_name
SET column1 = value1, column2 = value2, ...
WHERE condition;

table_name is the name of the table to be updated, column1, column2, etc. are the names of the columns to be updated, value1, value2, etc. are the values to be updated, and condition is the condition for updating.

The syntax of the REPLACE statement is as follows:

REPLACE INTO table_name (column1, column2, ...)
VALUES (value1, value2, ...);

In which table_name is the name of the table where data is to be replaced, column1, column2, etc. are the column names to be replaced, and value1, value2, etc. are the values to be replaced.

The UPDATE statement is used to modify existing data; it will not perform any operation if the row to be updated does not exist. On the other hand, the REPLACE statement deletes existing data (based on the table’s unique index) and then inserts new data.