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The word debounce can be used in a metaphorical sense to take a series of signals, take action on the first one and then ignore any subsequent ones within a certain period of time.

What I'm looking for is something of the inverse of that. A word that would describe the situation where you take in a series of signals, but only act on the last one when no more signals come in within a certain period of time. 'Throttle' seems like a possibility... but it also seems not quite right.

Any suggestion?

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  • Rather than "ignore any subsequent ones within a certain period of time", shouldn't it be "take the first signal and the final one and ignore everything in between within a certain period of time"? Dec 14, 2012 at 4:08
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    Isn't that just reversing the signal's logic level? The first signal is the end of incoming signals, then you act and "debounce" by ignoring the ongoing lack of signals... ;) Dec 14, 2012 at 7:01

3 Answers 3

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Throttle isn't right. It means reducing the rate of a repeated event into something more manageable, but the (reduced) repeat is still important and processed.

A debounce in electronics is taking the first signal when a mechanical switch is closed, and removing the subsequent ripple of current within a timeout (e.g. to remove the bounce of a keypress).

Usually, in the mechanical context, the signals in the ripple will be either high or low, so it doesn't really matter if you're taking the first, second, 21st or last: you're just smoothing out some unwanted static.

So what you want sounds to me like a debounce, except instead of taking a single signal in a given timeout (starting from the first signal), you want the final signal in another timeout (starting from the last-known signal).

You could call this something like final-signal debounce but I would probably avoid the word debounce. Perhaps something along the lines of final-signal processing, or a final-signal action or trigger. (Or last-signal....)

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Timeout action or something similar would work well in a case that you're taking action only when the signal fails to occur.

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"Delay trigger"?

(Don't make fun! Words I know - technical concepts, I'm still learning!)

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