Pausable

Pausable is an adjective used to describe something that can be temporarily halted and then resumed with minimal or predictable loss of state. In software and hardware, pausable components are designed to enter a paused state without requiring a full shutdown, allowing operation to continue from the same point after resumption. The concept is especially important in environments that must adapt to resource availability, user interaction, or real-time constraints.

In computing, pausable tasks, threads, or data streams can be suspended and later continued. Many programming environments provide explicit pause and resume mechanisms, such as pausable streams in asynchronous I/O libraries (for example, streams that expose pause() and resume() operations). Pausing often preserves internal state, buffers, and pointers so that processing can resume from the correct point. Implementations must handle concurrent access and ensure predictable behavior when paused or resumed, avoiding data loss or corruption.

In media playback, pausable behavior allows users to pause audio or video and resume later without rebooting the playback pipeline. In data processing pipelines and streaming services, pausable flows enable back-pressure and resource management by temporarily halting data production or consumption.

Considerations include how pausing affects in-flight operations, whether pause is cooperative or preemptive, and whether pause and resume are idempotent. Some systems implement time-based pausing using timers or clocks, while others rely on control messages or user input. Design choices influence latency, throughput, and complexity.

See also: pause, resume, suspend, back-pressure.