$skip (aggregation)

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Definition
Behavior
Example

Definition

$skip

Skips over the specified number of documents that pass into the stage and passes the remaining documents to the next stage in the pipeline.

The $skip stage has the following prototype form:

{ $skip: <positive 64-bit integer> }

$skip takes a positive integer that specifies the maximum number of documents to skip.

Note

Starting in MongoDB 5.0, the $skip pipeline aggregation has a 64-bit integer limit. Values passed to the pipeline which exceed this limit will return a invalid argument error.

Behavior

Using $skip with Sorted Results

If using the $skip stage with any of:

the $sort aggregation stage,
the sort() method, or
the sort field to the findAndModify command or the findAndModify() shell method,

be sure to include at least one field in your sort that contains unique values, before passing results to the $skip stage.

Sorting on fields that contain duplicate values may return a different sort order for those duplicate fields over multiple executions, especially when the collection is actively receiving writes.

The easiest way to guarantee sort consistency is to include the _id field in your sort query.

See the following for more information on each:

Example

Consider the following example:

db.article.aggregate([
    { $skip : 5 }
]);

This operation skips the first 5 documents passed to it by the pipeline. $skip has no effect on the content of the documents it passes along the pipeline.