Is REST DELETE really idempotent?

Question

DELETE is supposed to be idempotent.

If I DELETE http://example.com/account/123 it\'s going to delete the account.

If I do it again would I expect a 404, sin

Answer 1

From the HTTP RFC:

Methods can also have the property of "idempotence" in that (aside from error or expiration issues) the side-effects of N > 0 identical requests is the same as for a single request.

Note that's "side effects", not "response".