CREATE UNIQUE in neo4j produces duplicate nodes - neo4j

Question

According to the neo4j documentation:
CREATE UNIQUE is in the middle of MATCH and CREATE — it will match
what it can, and create what is missing. CREATE UNIQUE will always
make the least change possible to the graph — if it can use parts of
the existing graph, it will.
This sounds great, but CREATE UNIQUE doesn't seem to follow the 'least possible change' rule. e.g., here is some Cypher to create two people:
CREATE (n:Person {name: 'Alice'})
CREATE (n:Person {name: 'Bob'})
CREATE INDEX ON :Person(name)
and here's two CREATE UNIQUE statements, to create a relationship between those people. Since both people already exist in the graph, only the relationships should be newly created:
MATCH (a:Person {name: 'Alice'})
CREATE UNIQUE (a)-[:knows]->(b:Person {name: 'Bob'})
RETURN a
MATCH (a:Person {name: 'Alice'})
CREATE UNIQUE (a)<-[:knows]-(b:Person {name: 'Bob'})
RETURN a
After this, the graph should look like
(Alice)<---KNOWS--->(Bob).
But when you run a MATCH query:
MATCH (a:Person)
RETURN a
it seems that the graph now looks like
(Bob)
(Bob)--KNOWS-->(Alice)--KNOWS-->(Bob);
two extra Bobs have been created.
I looked a bit through the other Cypher commands, but none of them seem intended for this use case: create a link between existing node A and existing node B if B exists, and otherwise create a link between existing node A and a newly created node B. How can this problem best be solved within the Cypher framework?

Answer 1

This query should do what you want (if you always want to end up with a single knows relationship between the 2 nodes):
MATCH (a:Person {name: 'Alice'})
MERGE (b:Person {name: 'Bob'})
MERGE (a)-[:knows]->(b)
RETURN a;

Answer 2

Here is how you can do it with CREATE UNIQUE
MATCH (a:Person {name: 'Alice'}), (b:Person {name:'Bob'})
CREATE UNIQUE (a)-[:knows]->(b), (b)-[:knows]->(a)
You need 2 match clauses otherwise you are always creating the node in the CREATE UNIQUE statement, not matching existing nodes.