# Speculative deletes
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/speculative-deletes/17959
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 6, 2014, 5:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/speculative-deletes/17959 "2014-06-06T17:03:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2014, 5:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/speculative-deletes/17959/1 "2014-06-06T17:03:24Z")
I'm in the position where I need to make _sure_ a document is deleted from
the index when something occurs in my source system. I want to just hit it
with a DELETE every time. Is that a good idea?
It looks to me like DELETEing documents via ID is pretty cheap if the
document doesn't exist. It looks like it sets some dirty flags but is
otherwise pretty quick. My alternative is to do a GET and DELETE if it
exists or, maybe, do something cute like:
curl -XPOST 'localhost:9200/index/type/id/\_update' -d '{
"script" : "ctx.op = "delete""
}'
which will short circuit that.
Thoughts?
Nik
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### Author:  [@Itamar\_Syn\_Hershko](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Itamar_Syn_Hershko)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2014, 6:20pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/speculative-deletes/17959/2 "2014-06-07T18:20:32Z")
I'm pretty sure you're right
On Jun 6, 2014 8:03 PM, "Nikolas Everett" [nik9000@gmail.com](mailto:nik9000@gmail.com) wrote:
> I'm in the position where I need to make _sure_ a document is deleted from
> the index when something occurs in my source system. I want to just hit it
> with a DELETE every time. Is that a good idea?
>
> It looks to me like DELETEing documents via ID is pretty cheap if the
> document doesn't exist. It looks like it sets some dirty flags but is
> otherwise pretty quick. My alternative is to do a GET and DELETE if it
> exists or, maybe, do something cute like:
> curl -XPOST 'localhost:9200/index/type/id/\_update' -d '{
> "script" : "ctx.op = "delete""
> }'
> which will short circuit that.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Nik
>
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> [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAPmjWd3sit9WTgMV6qPb3WojV8-8aQt7VtwOHV6aP8q%2BMx32UQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm\_medium=email&utm\_source=footer](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAPmjWd3sit9WTgMV6qPb3WojV8-8aQt7VtwOHV6aP8q%2BMx32UQ%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer)
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:24am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/speculative-deletes/17959/3 "2017-07-06T01:24:00Z")