From: mwood AT indyvax DOT iupui DOT edu (Mark H. Wood)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: what's "foo"?
Date: 11 Nov 97 13:55:58 -0500
Organization: Indiana University - Purdue Univeristy At Indianapols,IN
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References: <01bceabf$55b66080$150867d1 AT default> <METAVHAbdhY0EwZJ AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>
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In article <METAVHAbdhY0EwZJ AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk>, Shawn Hargreaves <Shawn AT talula DOT demon DOT co DOT uk> writes:
> test writes:
>>I've seen "foo" poping up in lot of djgpp and at&t unix documentations. Why
>>is this obsesion with this word? I wonder if this is somekind of insider
>>jargon?
> 
> "foo" is a term commonly used by hacker-type people, so it crops up a
> lot in gnu documentation and unix utilities. It is used for any kind of
> meta variable, to mean "replace this with whatever the name of your
> actual variable or file is". So someone giving an example command line
> for the compiler might tell you to type "gcc foo.c -o foo.exe"...

FOO often travels with BAR, another placeholder.  There seems to be some
relationship here with FUBAR, an acronym for Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.
(There are alternative interpretations of that first letter.)

People who've hung around Digital Equipment products also recognize BAZ.  BAZ
was a STOPCD (crash reason) on TOPS-10 meaning Bit Already Zero, which (when
you wanted to flip it to zero) is a particular way of being FUBARed.
-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer    +1 317 274 0749   [@disclaimer@]
MWOOD AT INDYVAX DOT IUPUI DOT EDU                  Finger for more information.
A recent _Datamation_ cover asks, "are mainframes *cool* again?"  Am I the only
one who noticed the scathing irony of that question?