what is foo?

[MacTown06]

I have noticed that when people explain to me how to do somthing they say "foo" to represent a filename or wildcard. I sure most of you know what I am talking about.

What is this "foo" business? What does it mean? How did it get started?

[Calipso]

This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo) could help.

[JayMan8081]

Here is a Slashdot article discussing the very same question: http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/99/02/12/1433221.shtml
There are some theories down through the comments. You could also try a G4L search on 'history of foo' or something similar and see what comes up.

[je_fro]

I think it's because of "foo" and "bar"
How nicely they go together...

[stumbles]

I have noticed that when people explain to me how to do somthing they say "foo" to represent a filename or wildcard. I sure most of you know what I am talking about.

What is this "foo" business? What does it mean? How did it get started?


Try http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/frames.html

[bwkaz]

Try http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/frames.html Or, the actual "foo" page:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/foo.html

;)

[AaronD]

I'm glad there is somebody around to fight it! :)

[Syngin]

Wasn't it originally 'fubar' which I thought stood for "F**ked Up Beyond All Recognition"? I seem to recall it was started by the US armed forces at some point?

[bwkaz]

foo did not come from fubar, as far as the editors of the Jargon File can tell. First two explanatory paragraphs in the page I linked to:

When 'foo' is used in connection with 'bar' it has generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang acronym FUBAR (<deleted expansion>), later modified to foobar. Early versions of the Jargon File interpreted this change as a post-war bowdlerization, but it it now seems more likely that FUBAR was itself a derivative of 'foo' perhaps influenced by German furchtbar (terrible) — 'foobar' may actually have been the original form.

For, it seems, the word 'foo' itself had an immediate prewar history in comic strips and cartoons. The earliest documented uses were in the Smokey Stover comic strip published from about 1930 to about 1952. Bill Holman, the author of the strip, filled it with odd jokes and personal contrivances, including other nonsense phrases such as "Notary Sojac" and "1506 nix nix". The word "foo" frequently appeared on license plates of cars, in nonsense sayings in the background of some frames (such as "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but foo men chew"), and Holman had Smokey say "Where there's foo, there's fire".

[Syngin]

Wikipedia's take on 'foobar': link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar)

Excerpt:

Foobar is:

1) The association of two metasyntactic variables: foo and bar. These variables are often used in computer programming examples.

2) It is also a phonetic spelling of the army acronym FUBAR.

3) It could also be a shortening of the German word furchtbar which means terrible or awful.

4) foobar2000 is a free media player for Windows. It has a minimal style GUI focusing its features on the player itself.

5) FooBar Search Alerts is a search alert notification service that lets you monitor a particular webpage for keywords

Shouldn't there be something about demons in there too? Isn't that the context the Foo Fighters use it in? I suppose its 'foo' specific. ;)

Foo is the first metasyntactic variable, commonly used to represent an as-yet-unspecified term, value, process, function, destination or event but seldom a person (see Ned Baker, below). It is sometimes combined with bar to make foobar. This suggests that foo may have originated with the World War II slang term fubar, as an acronym for f**ked/fouled up beyond all recognition/repair, although the Jargon File makes a reasonably good case [1] that foo predates fubar. Foo was also used as a nonsense word in the surrealistic comic strip Smokey Stover that was popular in the 1940s and 1950s. See also Foo fighter for more foo etymology, as well as RFC 3092.