terminology - Words for resulting task states in computing



I have a question about naming of terminal states of a task regarding to computing area. Think of a task that is being processed by some system. There're several possible states the task can be ended up in.


I want to find short (one-worded if possible) and unambigous names for these particular states:



  1. When the task is finished with success, i.e. it's completely processed. Options: Succeeded, Successful, Completed, ???

  2. When the task is intentionally canceled by some external "will", e.g. by user or by another system. There's nothing erroneus in this state, because everything was ok during processning and intent to stop was conscious. I think Canceled is the only option.

  3. When the task is stopped because of reaching some invalid inner state (e.g. due to errors) which cannot be properly handled by processing system to continue the task. Options: Aborted/Faulted/???


There's an example of such naming scheme in Microsoft .Net Framework for Task objects - TaskStatus enumeration (look at Members part). According to it the states from the list above are: RanToCompletion, Canceled, Faulted.


But I'm confused with RanToCompletion option (whish corresponds to my 1st item). The description from linked page for both Faulted and RanToCompletion options says that "task completed" (either with errors or without respectively). Therefore I think that RanToCompletion option is kinda ambigous because it isn't clear how successful the "completion" is. Also it'd be better to use one word if possible.


The word Aborted as an option for 3rd list item seems ambigous too for me as I understand it as a generic term for 2nd and 3rd, i.e. task can be aborted by some external or internal event.


Thank you in advance!



Answer



I will go ahead and answer this because not only do I love words, but I'm also a 25 year long professional, nearly 32 years total, in the computer science field. My specialty in fact is in .Net :)


Completed or Successful: for the task is done, finished, accomplished it's work.


Cancelled: for intentional action by the user to stop the task or process.


Aborted: for some inner state or invalid condition which causes the task to halt or stop.


Failed: for some inner state or invalid condition which causes the task to "fail" (this is similar to "abort" but the semantic difference is that aborted indicates certain things might have succeeded and the process stopped, this example could mean a larger, more critical, type of "failure" which caused the entire operation to not succeed). Failed and Aborted will not always have meaning separately depending on the context of the processes involved.


Faulted: for when the task technically completes, meaning the process was able to finish, but it had errors.


As Yosef mentioned you also might want an option for when the system is "on hold" or waiting. Waiting or Suspended are both good options for that condition. I would not use "Held".


I think your confusion about "Faulted" and "RanToCompletion" is that you are thinking Faulted means successful in exactly the same way "Completed/Completion" does? Per the documentation at your link? What it means is that the process technically finished but there were errors. This is different than cancelled in that "cancel" is a process caused by user action. "Aborted" is a process caused by an internal failure which is unrelated to user action but caused the process to be unable to complete.


"Faulted" is a special condition where a process is capable of completing (not all processes will be able to do this - depends on the context of your API and what it's doing), and it did complete, but it completed with some errors. Again, it's still a "type" of failure; one that technically completed but had errors. Not all programming processes will be capable of this condition. For example "Save File". The file either saves or it doesn't. There are no intermediate steps or conditions or processes which would allow us to say the "Save" process completed but had some errors.


Edit: I want to edit my example regarding the "Save" process, per the comments section. I'll use a simpler example, because "Save" could actually have an internal failure but still complete (see comments). It's still a "Faulted" state but, again, not all processes will be capable of a "Faulted" state.


Processes which will be able to fault will typically be processes which have multiple things going on, are capable of completing "some" things, but not others, etc...


Let's not be overly pedantic about this please. I'm trying to display the difference in meaning to a non-native speaker. Yes, you could probably always find a way to say that there is an internal failure but the process technically "completed" in which case we would call it a "Fault". That's why I used "Save" originally. But I agree it's not the best example.


A better example: "Process.OpenFile". There are not many cases where we could imagine a "fault" like behavior. Yes, yes, you could come up with scenarios. But basically if the intended action is to open a file for use (ostensibly in a GUI) for a user, then it either open's (success) or it fails (doesn't open) for use by the user.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent...
Read more

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he ...
Read more

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

I often see English notation about time using the " and ' symbols. I have always mistaken about the two, and even their meaning. I'm more used to "01:05:56", for example. How do you represent the hour, minutes, and seconds using the apostrophe and quotes punctuations? Which is for the hour, which is for minutes, and which is for seconds? Is it the common way to write duration of time elapsed? Do they have a special pronunciation? Answer It's not particularly common for expressions of time. It's similar to degrees-minutes-seconds: instead of decimal degrees (38.897212°,-77.036519°) you write (38° 53′ 49.9632″, -77° 2′ 11.4678″). Both are derived from a sexagesimal counting system such as that devised in Ancient Babylon: the single prime represents the first sexagesimal division and the second the next, and so on. 17th-century astronomers used a third division of 1/60th of a second. The advantage of using minute and second symbols for time is that it o...
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd...
Read more

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?

I'm writing a fiction where inhabitants live on the Moon, so I want a name for them. I know that 'venusian' means 'of or relating to the planet Venus', 'martian' means 'of or relating to the planet Mars or its hypothetical inhabitants' and so on. But, after having observed that 'moonian' is not a word, I wonder as to whether there is a term meaning 'of or relating to the Moon or its hypothetical inhabitants'.
Read more