errno 89 (ECANCELED): meaning and diagnosis

Status / error code:		Category:

Constant name:
Source:		Operating System:
Description: An operation was canceled before normal completion, so its partial-result and ownership rules must be checked.

Could be also:
Constant	Type	OS
ERROR_NO_PROC_SLOTS	Win32 error	Windows
EDESTADDRREQ	errno	Linux
ENOSYS	errno	Solaris
PINBALL_FILE_SYSTEM	BugCheck Code	Windows

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EDESTADDRREQ	ENOSYS

ECANCELED

Cancellation is a state transition

ECANCELED means that an operation ended through cancellation rather than normal success, a peer refusal, or an elapsed deadline. It does not by itself say whether data was transferred, whether a request reached an external system, or whether completion callbacks have already run.

Safe recovery depends on the operation’s state machine. Record the cancellation initiator, the stage reached, and the ownership of buffers, descriptors, and callbacks. Retrying a non-idempotent request without knowing whether the original operation became visible can duplicate work.

Questions to answer before retrying

Was the operation queued, started, partially completed, or already committed when cancellation was requested?
Who now owns associated buffers and completion objects, and are late completions still possible?
Does the higher-level protocol have an idempotency key or another way to detect a prior effect?

References

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