Mail Archives: djgpp/1998/01/26/06:17:04
>>Exactly correct. "Foo," along with "bar" and sometimes "baz," is a
>>placeholder used in examples. When I say, "type 'gcc -o foo.exe
>>foo.c'," I mean that you should substitute "foo" in the example with
>>whatever your real-world program is named.
>>
>Poser: Does there exist a universal, as in non-English-specific,
>placeholder?
I don't think so... I think each country has its own... of course we all
mainly use the american ones as long as we speak American English...
>I have used foo, bar and baz all my (programming) life and it
>never occurred to me, being the American English centric chump I am, that
>someone non-American would have a problem understanding these conventions.
Well, my experience is this: at first it was quite difficult to understand
their meaning, but it was like "afaik", "imho" or "rtfm", they were just
some
words used conventionally for a particular meaning. It was not important
what the acronym was.
Of course I find it strange to use these placeholders, but for me it is
also
strange to *write in English*! :-)
>I intuited immediately in my first Fortran class in (gasp) 1979 (ahh, the
>good ole days of punchcards and greenbar...) what foo, bar and baz meant.
What if I send you a sample of italian placeholders? :-)
ciao
Giacomo
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