What is a Percursor?

[Erem Boto]

While poking around in org.squeryl.Schema, I noticed a bunch of classes with the word "Percursor" in them (e.g. LifecycleEventPercursorTable). I am unfamiliar with the word -- what does it mean in this context? One of those rare cases where I couldn't find an (English) meaning anywhere.

Thanks!

Erem

[Maxime Lévesque]

In an expression such as this one :

  beforeInsert[Professor] call(doSomething)

the result is of type LifecycleEvent

if you decompose the sequence of calls, you have :

val a1 = beforeInsert[Professor]

val result = a1.call(doSomething)

so a1 is an intermediary object, that yields the result
once .call is invoked, so a1 is in a sense a precursor
to the result LifecycleEvent, so I called it LifecycleEventPercursor(Table | Class)

It is probably more commonly used in french, but it seems to also exist in english : 

 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/precursor
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precursor_%28chemistry%29

at least in chemistry.

Cheers !

2012/1/16 Erem Boto <ehb...@gmail.com>

[David Whittaker]

It's not uncommon in American English either.  Se the first definition here: https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+precursor.

2012/1/16 Maxime Lévesque <maxime....@gmail.com>

[Erem Boto]

Ahh if Precursor is the intended word, then I believe it's mis-spelled in the code base! The spelling I see throughout is Percursor, which I had never encountered before =)

[Maxime Lévesque]

Percusor is the one who plays percussions, given that it's a factory pattern here,
they need to churn out instances with the correct rythm (cadence ?), that is what the percussor does ;-)

Djeeeez...  I might be becoming dyslexic,  have to consult !

Well, one more typo to fix .... ;-)

2012/1/17 Erem Boto <ehb...@gmail.com>