Checking if ANY logstash index exists

[nick-george]

Hi,

Elasticsearch version 6.2.4

I'm trying to see if any logstash index exists using the Python API and with dev_tools.

I'm following these docs:
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.3/indices-exists.html
and here:
https://elasticsearch-py.readthedocs.io/en/master/api.html#elasticsearch.client.IndicesClient.exists

If I do the following, you can see that no logstash index exists.

GET _cat/indices
green open telegraf-2018.07.17       1AM5fYwmSsaLFYRndyw_mw 2 0 4348 0 1.1mb 1.1mb
green open .kibana                   q_OnrKElTqOZsD8YnNr70w 2 0   16 0  95kb  95kb

Then I check to see if any logstash index exists using a wildcard.

HEAD logstash-*
200 - OK

And finally, a check for a specific index nam

HEAD logstash-2017.07.17
404 - Not Found

You can see that while a query to see if the exact index name exists returns a 404, but the check to see if logstash-* exists returns a 200 OK. Could someone please explain why the wildcard search is failing? I don't have any index name with that pattern. I'm confused why the python API docs mention wildcards when they don't appear to work.

If wildcard searches don't work in this way, would it be worth updating the docs to reflect this?

Thanks for your time,
Nick