Async methods that do not need cancellation

Question

Learning cancellation of async tasks found this article:

As part of supporting the task-based async programming model in the .NET Framework 4.5, we added the CancellationToken structure to the signatures of a large set of async APIs in the .NET Framework. For example, the HttpClient class exposes a GetAsync method overload that accepts a cancellation token. However, it is not essential for all async methods to support cancellation. For instance, if you look at the HttpContent class, the LoadIntoBufferAsync method does not expose an overload with a cancellation token.

What is fundamental difference between asynchronous operations that expose CancellationToken in their signatures and ones that don't?

Answer 1

What is fundamental difference between asynchronous operations that expose CancellationToken in their signatures and ones that don't?

Asynchronous operations that expose CancellationToken in their signatures:

• Can be cancelled

Asynchronous operations that don't expose CancellationToken in their signatures:

• Can't be cancelled; or
• they're cancellable some other way (e.g. yourAsyncObject.Dispose wraps up everything nicely)