$ cat inventory
Item    Amount  Cost    Value   Description
----    ------  ----    -----   -----------
1       4       50.1            rubber gloves
2       100     5.23    500     test tubes
3       5       80      400     clamps
4       23      19      437     plates
5       99      24      2376    cleaning cloth
6       89      147     13083   bunsen burners
7       5       175     875     scales
8       35      105     0       pipettes

$ cat inventory.r
   Offset
---------
       70
       94
      120
      138
      157
      185
      215
      234

Let's delete records 3 and 6 from inventory and its index inventory.r. We don't need to specify keycolumn in this example because the method used to index the table simply keeps track of rows without regard to their contents:

$ (echo 3; echo 6) | delete -mr inventory
$ cat inventory
Item    Amount  Cost    Value   Description
----    ------  ----    -----   -----------
1       4       50.1            rubber gloves
2       100     5.23    500     test tubes
 
4       23      19      437     plates
5       99      24      2376    cleaning cloth
 
7       5       175     875     scales
8       35      105     0       pipettes

$ cat inventory.r
   Offset
---------
       70
       94
      138
      157
      215
      234

The result of the delete command is that records 3 and 6 are blank and the corresponding offsets in the index table have been removed.