Why does S3.deleteObject not fail when the specified key doesn't exist?

Question

Using the AWS SDK for Node, why do I not get an error when trying to delete an object that doesn't exist (i.e. the S3 key is wrong)?

If I specify a non-existent bucket on the other hand, an error is produced.

If you consider the following Node program, the Key parameter lists a key which doesn't exist in the bucket, yet the error argument to the callback is null:

var aws = require('aws-sdk')

function getSetting(name) {
  var value = process.env[name]
  if (value == null) {
    throw new Error('You must set the environment variable ' + name)
  }
  return value
}

var s3Client = new aws.S3({
  accessKeyId: getSetting('AWSACCESSKEYID'),
  secretAccessKey: getSetting('AWSSECRETACCESSKEY'),
  region: getSetting('AWSREGION'),
  params: {
    Bucket: getSetting('S3BUCKET'),
  },
})
picturePath = 'nothing/here'
s3Client.deleteObject({
  Key: picturePath,
}, function (err, data) {
  console.log('Delete object callback:', err)
})

Answer 1

Because that's what the specs say it should do.

deleteObject(params = {}, callback) ⇒ AWS.Request

Removes the null version (if there is one) of an object and inserts a delete marker, which becomes the latest version of the object. If there isn't a null version, Amazon S3 does not remove any objects.

So if the object doesn't exist, it's still not an error when calling deleteObject, and if versioning is enabled, it adds a delete marker even though there was nothing to delete previously.