why foo and bar

[Heinrich Pumpernickel]

in c/c++ programming people often call their variables foo and bar

why ?

 

[=?iso-8859-1?q?Lars_Rune_N=F8stdal?=]

in c/c++ programming people often call their variables foo and bar

why ?

fucked up beyond all recognition

 

[Robert Gamble]

in c/c++ programming people often call their variables foo and bar

why ?

<http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/foo.html>

Robert Gamble

 

[CBFalconer]

in c/c++ programming people often call their variables foo and bar

why ?

Because the earliest c programmers were devoted readers of the '30s
comic strip which featured Smokey and the FooFighters. It's a
living memorial.

--
Some informative links:
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

 

[Jonathan Pritchard]

fucked up beyond all recognition

Slightly off topic but the first time I heard this referenced was in
Saving Private Ryan. As an in-joke amongst the men, excluding the new guy.

 

[Joe Wright]

fucked up beyond all recognition

The last word is 'repair' as I learned it years ago. US Military FUBAR.

 

[mensanator]

fucked up beyond all recognition

But that doesn't explain why it's "foo" instead of "fu".

Obviously, when the WWII vets returned home, their wives
would get mad if they swore in front of their children. Hence,
my dad told us that SNAFU meant "Siuation Normal: All
Fouled Up". It was much later that I learned the original
meaning was "Fucked Up".

Not that your wife wouldn't get mad at you even if you didn't
swear. Such as the time my dad refered to our tomcat as
"the ball-bearing mouse trap".

 

[Richard Tobin]

But that doesn't explain why it's "foo" instead of "fu".

"fu" would obviously not be an English word.

-- Richard

 

[Joe Wright]

"fu" would obviously not be an English word.

-- Richard

Nonsense. Kung Fu is English isn't it?

 

[Default User]

The last word is 'repair' as I learned it years ago. US Military
FUBAR.

I've seen it both was, "repair" was more common in engineering, I
suppose as engineers would be expected to attempt repairs.




Brian

 

[Ancient_Hacker]

in c/c++ programming people often call their variables foo and bar

why ?

I don't know for sure, but it seems to have started on the US East
Coast.

We didnt know about it here in the MidWest, until I submitted a bug
report to DEC, in Marlborough, MA.

The commands they typed to (incorrectly) reproduce the bug were
something like:

..EDIT FOO.TXT
# I
THIS IS A LINE WITH TABS
this is a line with spaces
^L
# W
# Q

..COPY FOO.TXT BAR.TXT
..EDIT BAR.TXT
# ^C
# W
# Q
..COMPARE FOO.TXT BAR.TXT
0 differences.
..DEL FOO.TXT BAR.TXT

 

[Michal Nazarewicz]

in c/c++ programming people often call their variables foo and bar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable