Message-Id: <199801242041.JAA07450@cirrostratus.netaccess.co.nz>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <chapmic5 AT pop3 DOT netaccess DOT co DOT nz>
From: "Richard Chappell" <chapmic5 AT cirrostratus DOT netaccess DOT co DOT nz>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 08:33:40 +0000
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Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: Re: foo
Reply-to: Pixnaps AT netaccess DOT co DOT nz
In-reply-to: <6abnlg$7aj@ecuador.earthlink.net>
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> From:          "Kurt Wall" <krwall AT earthlink DOT net>
> Subject:       OFF TOPIC: Re: foo
> Date:          Fri, 23 Jan 1998 20:38:41 -0700
> Organization:  EarthLink Network, Inc.
> To:            djgpp AT delorie DOT com

> John M. Aldrich wrote in message <34C062AD DOT 52B9 AT cs DOT com>...
> >Michael Zanyat wrote:
> >>
> >> I am new to DJGPP (and even to C) and in some documentations I read foo.
> >>
> >> What the hell is foo. I find it in ASM docs as well as in a message
> >> about the
> >> copyright for comercial use...
> >> Maybe foo is just a 'place keeper' in english...?
> >
> >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 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.
> 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.
> 
> Kurt

Well, I'm in New Zealand (so I'm definately not american!), and I 
immediately understood what 'foo' meant.