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I don't have my books handy, and my d20pfsrd searchfu is apparently very weak.
When a caster decides mid-casting to cancel a spell, does the caster still count as having cast the spell?
The scenario is that my pbp party's bard started a Sleep spell during the surprise round. Before her first full turn, the enemy is defeated, so she was still midcasting, but definitely does not want to cast the spell now. I am certain the spell is used for the day, but I hate popping something like this on an inexperienced player unless I am 100% certain, and I would like to keep things flowing before I get back to my books.
Casting Time
Most spells have a casting time of 1 standard action. Others take 1 round or more, while a few require only a swift action.
A spell that takes 1 round to cast is a full-round action. It comes into effect just before the beginning of your turn in the round after you began casting the spell. You then act normally after the spell is completed.
A spell that takes 1 minute to cast comes into effect just before your turn 1 minute later (and for each of those 10 rounds, you are casting a spell as a full-round action, just as noted above for 1-round casting times). These actions must be consecutive and uninterrupted, or the spell automatically fails.
When you begin a spell that takes 1 round or longer to cast, you must continue the concentration from the current round to just before your turn in the next round (at least). If you lose concentration before the casting is complete, you lose the spell.
A spell with a casting time of 1 swift action doesn't count against your normal limit of one spell per round. However, you may cast such a spell only once per round. Casting a spell with a casting time of 1 swift action doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity.
You make all pertinent decisions about a spell (range, target, area, effect, version, and so forth) when the spell comes into effect.
No matter why you stop if you do the spell is lost as a failure.
However you are the GM -- you could simply point out what should *normally* happen and then explain that you don't want to feel like a jerk by sticking to that when the player didn't know and let it go with them keeping the spell.
After all this is exactly why there is a GM and not a computer running the game.