ZCatalog and the name "brain"

Zope
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1

Hi,

anybody knows why the result from the ZCatalog are called brains?

cf https://zope.readthedocs.io/en/latest/zopebook/SearchingZCatalog.html#methods-of-search-results

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You caught my attention and I had to look it up.

Thanks to git I found the following:

The "brain" term was first used in this commit by @jimfulton from 1997-10-09 - "first cut, no testing": https://github.com/zopefoundation/Zope/commit/6651320cefaedebd6bb04a65e38b01a4872ce6cc

Until the following commit, this was the only reference. The next commit from @jimfulton from 1997-12-05 containing the term brains use them in a catalog result like context - "Better brain and record-as-instance support.":

That doesn't explain why the term brain was used. However, I like it as a record holding meta information of an object.

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I wonder if Jim had "zombie" processes in mind. I mean "z"catalog... hmmm :thinking: :brain:

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