nsupdate delete question

[James M]

Hi-
While invoking nsupdate within a program I notice that trying to
delete a nonexistant host does not return an error.
Same thing seems to happen from the command line which I will show next..

[root at mandy4 ccadns]# nslookup mandy11.example.com
Server:         204.62.134.38
Address:        204.62.134.38#53

** server can't find mandy11.example.com: NXDOMAIN

[root at mandy4 ccadns]# nsupdate -d delete11
Sending update to 204.62.134.38#53
Outgoing update query:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: UPDATE, status: NOERROR, id:  37857
;; flags: ; ZONE: 1, PREREQ: 0, UPDATE: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; ZONE SECTION:
;example.com.                   IN      SOA

;; UPDATE SECTION:
mandy11.example.com.    0       ANY     A

;; TSIG PSEUDOSECTION:
mandy4.example.com.     0       ANY     TSIG
hmac-md5.sig-alg.reg.int. 1241099997 300 16 blahblah== 37857 NOERROR 0


Reply from update query:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: UPDATE, status: NOERROR, id:  37857
;; flags: qr ra ; ZONE: 0, PREREQ: 0, UPDATE: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; TSIG PSEUDOSECTION:
mandy4.example.com.     0       ANY     TSIG
hmac-md5.sig-alg.reg.int. 1241099997 300 16 blahblah== 37857 NOERROR 0


[root at mandy4 ccadns]#

[root at mandy4 ccadns]# cat delete11
key mandy4.example. blahblahblah
server mandy4.example.com
zone example.com
update delete mandy11.example.com a
send
[root at mandy4 ccadns]#

As you can see from the nslookup mandy11 does not exist within dns yet
nsupdate delete mandy11 seems to work.
Am I missing something in the response section indicating an error?
Or can you recommend another approach to avoiding misleading a user
into thinking his host was deleted properly?
Thanks for the help...
-Jim