“Silent fail” or “silent failure” [closed]

Question

When an operation fails silently, i.e. without providing a notification that it failed, is that operation a silent fail, or a silent failure?

Example:

Given a variable x that stores the value 1, when we try to assign a different value to it:

x = 2 

then the outcome of that operation can be:

1. a success (the new value was successfully assigned; the value of x is 2),
2. a silent fail/failure (the assignment failed silently; the value of x is still 1),
3. an exception (the assignment failed and an exception was thrown).

My question is about word choice. I'm not sure which of these two terms is correct, or if both are correct, which is more suitable.

Also, if you know a better phrase for this (for outcome 2), I'd love to hear it.

Answer 1

The short answer is that either choice is correct, but you'll probably catch less flak for using "silent failure."