From: "Chris La Mantia" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: Why does sizeof give me... Date: 9 Aug 1997 02:10:48 GMT Organization: gte.net Lines: 95 Message-ID: <5sgjj8$pv9$1@gte2.gte.net> References: <199708070224 DOT OAA03759 AT teleng1 DOT tait DOT co DOT nz gatekeeper.tait.co.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: 1cust78.tnt1.columbia.mo.da.uu.net To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Precedence: bulk Georg Kolling wrote in article ... > Bill Currie schrieb: > > struct foo { > > char snafu __attribute__((packed)); > > long bar __attribute__((packed)); > > Is there anywhere a factory that produces such strange var names? > Or are they all hand-made? Somewhere I read 'booga', but my favourite ones are > 'double half' and 'long ago' although they are 'real' names... 'foo' and 'bar' are "standard" metasyntactic variables. For those unacquainted with metasyntactic variables, here's a snippet from the Jargon File 4.0.0 (http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon.html): metasyntactic variable /n./ A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: foo, bar, baz, quux, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage, now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford), baz dropped out of use for a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this sequence inserts qux before quux. bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). foo, bar, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other CMU-associated variables include gorp. foo, bar, fum: This series is reported to be common at XEROX PARC. fred, barney: See the entry for fred. These tend to be Britishisms. corge, grault, flarp: Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers. zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. snork Brown University, early 1970s. foo, bar, zot Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. blarg, wibble New Zealand. toto, titi, tata, tutu France. pippo, pluto, paperino Italy. Pippo /pee'po/ and Paperino /pa-per-ee'-no/ are the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck. aap, noot, mies The Netherlands. These are the first words a child used to learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board. Of all these, only `foo' and `bar' are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and `foobaz' also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris La Mantia / lamantia AT gte DOT net Current Project: Infinite Worlds, an RPG with a dynamic world http://home1.gte.net/lamantia/infinite NO UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL E-MAIL ACCEPTED