Off-list, Ryan Tomayko wrote:

> On May 10, 2005, at 2:57 PM, Graham Fawcett wrote:
>
>> Ryan Tomayko wrote:
>>
>>> .... and deleting something should be idempotent anyway. You can
>>> delete the same thing as many times as you want, the result will
>>> always be that the item no longer exists.
>>
>> I can think of numerous cases where I'd rather recieve a 404 or 5xx
>> when trying to delete something that doesn't exist. This could
>> signal an error in application logic.
>
> I don't think indempotence means that you will get the same result
> back in this case but rather that the state of the resource will be
> the same after multiple identical requests.

Yes -- of course you're right. Deletion is an idempotent action by
definition.

-- Graham