Why foo and bar in every tutorial i read?

[ravi4udude]

Why these used as variable name? any story?

 

[Antonio Contreras]

Why these used as variable name? any story?

Read this:

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

 

[P.J. Plauger]

Why these used as variable name? any story?

They derive from FUBAR, an old US Navy acronym for "Fucked
up beyond all repair." The term had considerable currency
at MIT going back at least half a century, AFAIK. Toot
hackers were the first people I knew of who distilled out
foo and bar as generic identifiers.

HTH,

P.J. Plauger
Dinkumware, Ltd.
http://www.dinkumware.com

 

[Richard Heathfield]

ravi4udude said:

Why these used as variable name? any story?

Google for "Jargon File", or browse http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/ if I
remembered that correctly.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

Why these used as variable name? any story?

I do not believe that either "foo" or "bar" are mentioned anywhere in the
C standard(s) document(s). Therefore, your post is off-topic in
comp.lang.c.

 

[Randy Howard]

Kenny McCormack wrote

I do not believe that either "foo" or "bar" are mentioned anywhere in the
C standard(s) document(s). Therefore, your post is off-topic in
comp.lang.c.

 

[Walter Roberson]

I do not believe that either "foo" or "bar" are mentioned anywhere in the
C standard(s) document(s). Therefore, your post is off-topic in
comp.lang.c.

"bar" is used in the Rationale description of trigraphs,
in discussing the 9 ASCII characters not present in ISO 646.

I haven't found "foo" though.

 

[P.J. Plauger]

"bar" is used in the Rationale description of trigraphs,
in discussing the 9 ASCII characters not present in ISO 646.

I haven't found "foo" though.

I did my best to excise all instances of foo and bar in the original
draft C Standard. (Otherwise, you would have found several.) I think
the Rationale left my hands by the time the trigraphs happened.
(Otherwise, you wouldn't have found that "bar".)

P.J. Plauger

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Walter Roberson said:

"bar" is used in the Rationale description of trigraphs,
in discussing the 9 ASCII characters not present in ISO 646.

I haven't found "foo" though.

It's on line 745 of my copy of the C89 draft:

"The abstract, the foreword, the examples, the footnotes, the"

 

[ozbear]

I did my best to excise all instances of foo and bar in the original
draft C Standard. (Otherwise, you would have found several.) I think
the Rationale left my hands by the time the trigraphs happened.
(Otherwise, you wouldn't have found that "bar".)

P.J. Plauger

Why?

Oz

 

[P.J. Plauger]

Why?

I went to Princeton, not MIT.

P.J. Plauger
Dinkumware, Ltd.
http://www.dinkumware.com

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

Why?

I suspect he considers such slang ill suited to an international
standard. Just as we consider excess abbreviations (u, plz, etc.)
unsuited to c.l.c.

--
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on
"show options" at the top of the article, then click on the
"Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson
More details at: <http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/>
Also see <http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/>

 

[tmp123]

I do not believe that either "foo" or "bar" are mentioned anywhere in the
C standard(s) document(s). Therefore, your post is off-topic in
comp.lang.c.

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C".
No references about "C standards".
Thus, the post agrees the description and is valid (in particular, I
found it interesting).

 

[Kenny McCormack]

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C". No references about "C standards". Thus, the post
agrees the description and is valid (in particular, I found it
interesting).

Stick around for a few minutes. You'll find out the truth.

 

[Jordan Abel]

I suspect he considers such slang ill suited to an international
standard.

Why? It's a valid identifier, not "slang". Any particular reason to
choose "i" or "n" over "foo" and "bar"?

 

[Kenneth Brody]

tmp123 wrote:
[...]

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C".
No references about "C standards".
Thus, the post agrees the description and is valid (in particular, I
found it interesting).

(1) Who says that Google's description is correct?

(2) "Discussions about C" does not imply "discussions about every
extension to C ever written on any platform".

--
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------------+
| Kenneth J. Brody | www.hvcomputer.com | |
| kenbrody/at\spamcop.net | www.fptech.com | #include <std_disclaimer.h> |
+-------------------------+--------------------+-----------------------------+
Don't e-mail me at: <mailto:[email protected]>

 

[Al Balmer]

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C".
No references about "C standards".

Have you informed Google of their mistake?

 

[Default User]

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C".
No references about "C standards".
Thus, the post agrees the description and is valid (in particular, I
found it interesting).

Those who persist in posting off-topic messages, and the ones you
reference are, will find themselves shunned by the majority of the
participants. If your goal is to talk to no one except Kenny and Rod
and the other trolls, keep on what you're doing.



Brian

 

[Keith Thompson]

[...]

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C".
No references about "C standards".

Google is not Usenet, and Google definitely doesn't get to decide what
this newsgroup is about.

Thus, the post agrees the description and is valid (in particular, I
found it interesting).

I find discussions of handbells, science fiction, and electoral
politics interesting, but I would object to any such discussions in a
newsgroup that discusses standard C.

A number of people seem to think that we shouldn't discourage
discussions of non-standard features in comp.lang.c. Jack Klein has
written a good refutation of this idea; see
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c/msg/1460ed5b9ad3dae1?hl=en>.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

According to google, comp.lang.c group description is something like
"discussions about C".

Google have absolutely no clue what they're talking about, in that
case. Heck, they just make it up based on the title I expect. They
probably think that alt.sex.tv is for discussions about roman numbers
on the telly.

No references about "C standards".
Thus, the post agrees the description and is valid (in particular, I
found it interesting).

Its not. The topic of this group is clearly defined.
Mark McIntyre