For example, if one accidentally tried to save a file to a write-protected disk, removing that disk, removing the write-protect tab, and then reinserting and hitting "retry" might work, or if there wasn't room for the file it the application would be informed of that that wouldn't be a good option if the disk had been write-protected for a reason, however. Note that Abort did not mean "just cancel the requested operation"-it meant "kill the application". Ignore - Give the application some random data and hope for the best. If a disk had been removed, reinserting the last disk that had been used might work, but inserting a different disk may be disastrous. Retry - Repeat the requested operation and hope it works. If an application asked to read some data from a file, and block 1571 of the disk was unreadable, there was no defined mechanism by which DOS could tell the application "Sorry-it turns out that part of the file is unreadable". Historically, the Abort/Retry/Ignore question in MS-DOS was a result of an I/O subsystem which had no way of reporting problems from the disk sector level through the file-system level to the underlying application. In particular, terminate can have the very same connotation about abortion that you were wary about concerning abort. Therefore, the question is not so much whether or not to use either of the words, but when to use them.Īs for alternatives, I am not convinced terminate is a much better alternative to abort. Abort carries a connotation of “pulling an emergency brake”. If you face the choice whether or not to abort something, you have to think fast, as the operation might be progressing in the background. You abort a running operation, something that is halfway done and will possibly require a rollback. Abort, on the other hand, sounds somewhat more severe.You can cancel something before it has really started (e.g., saving settings) you cancel a choice of an operation you were about to invoke and, in particular, you can think about whether or not to cancel for a minute or for an hour, and nothing will change. Cancel sounds pretty much like a routine operation.Are the listed words really synonyms? I cannot provide any references now (possibly because many software developers/producers do not consistently follow the distinction, either), but my impression is that at least abort and cancel are slightly different:
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