From: "Tom Cook" <tcook AT nexus DOT edu DOT au>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: The meaning of FOO and BAR
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 19:57:31 +0930
Organization: Nexus Information Service
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Jeremy Nelson wrote in message <67p85c$p9d AT eve DOT enteract DOT com>...
>Noam Rotem  <nrotem AT johnbryce DOT co DOT il> wrote:
>>I see every here and there examples of code, using the prefixes FOO and
BAR.
>>I always consider it merely identifiers, ignoring their semantic meaning,
>>but I've got curious lately.
>>Are these abbreviations or something? What are the originals of the
>>prefixes?
>
>You might try reading the "new hacker's dictionary" (eg, the Jargon
Lexicon)
>which discusses the entymology of "foo" and "bar" and hundreds of other
>items which if you have a knowledge of will allow you to have a good
working
>knowledge of most of the lingo that unix programmers use.
>
>http://www.wins.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/
>
>Jeremy

I believe the identifiers 'foo' and 'bar' come from the old British Army
acronym 'FOOBAR' which is a mis-spelling of the even older British Army
acronym 'FUBAR' which stands for "F***ed Up Beyond All Recovery". Not sure
on this.
This is all just slightly off-topic anyway!
HTH!
Tom Cook