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Archive 1

Unless not possible due to language limitations, shouldn't all output the same? Python, PHP and Actioncode miss the comma. Python also misses the space (no idea if this is intentional). LSL has the comma, but the comment states that it doesn't. 85.146.78.111 (talk) 05:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'd like to see something to the effect:

"foo" and "bar" are generally not used in formal documentation. They are something of an "in joke", and mark text as being meant for fellow coders, as not having been (or intended to be) formally reviewed - certainly not by persons outside the hacker culture. They may indicate that code is to do with a subject that is technical with respect to computer science itself - one might see them in comments on code relating to compilers or operating systems, but not in code relating to end user interfaces or business-level logic.

Oh really? Maybe you should have a look at the current C++ ISO standard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.91.172.42 (talk) 18:09, 13 January 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That's just sad. "Foobar" is just silly hacker jargon. 83.255.36.203 (talk) 17:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

But that also supports one of the parent's assertions - that it's a CS-specific nomenclature - by being used in a programming language spec. I agree that it's not about formality, but more about being CS-specific. I'd also like to note that ISO standards, by virtue of being largely written by industry insiders, vary wildly in terms of style of language (let alone vocabulary) used, and hence "foobar"'s use in a very specific ISO standard doesn't strongly imply its widespread use, nor its suitability thereof. C xong (talk) 02:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'd like to clarify that 'foobar', 'foo', 'bar' and 'baz' are psuedocode terms and should never be used in real code. Generally psuedocode involves simplistic examples for reference only by other programmers and the use of the words such as 'foo' and 'bar' help to identify the code as such. It is not a hacker culture thing. Use of these naming conventions in real code is highly frowned upon and those who do are 'hacks', not 'hackers'. I agree with the above poster that just because the terms are referenced in an ISO standard has no bearing whatsoever. It is extremely bad practice to use such words in genuine code. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.243.44.2 (talk) 18:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I recall a systems programmer working on Digital Equipment Machines (DEC) VAXes in the early 1980s, grinning that Digital had an acronym -- FUBAR -- for "Failed Unibus Address Register" -- and it accurately described the state of the entire system once such a catastrophic fault had happened. Someone with access to Unibus architecture/programming manual(s) may be able to verify this -- in which case, the "citation needed" marker on the Digital Equipment Machines reference could be resolved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.2.61.58 (talk) 02:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oddly enough I can provide a citation for this. In DEC's VaxBI options handbook, Published 1986 by Digital Equipment Corporation, Chapter 12, page 10 the FUBAR register is defined as:

Failed Unibus Address Register (FUBAR): When a VAXBI to Unibus transaction results in a SSYN timeout, the FUBAR holds the failed Unibus address sent by the VAXBI master. The FUBAR address is bb+728

And yes, when that is set, the computer is totally FUBAR. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.193.143.46 (talk) 01:57, 6 January 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I believe that the neutrality of the section "Criticism" isn't... well, neutral. It leans very heavily towards discouraging use of the hackerism. Is there any reliable and verifiable source that denounces foobar? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.144.188.2 (talk) 17:11, 22 July 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No there isn't, the whole paragraph consists of unsourced claims and weasel-wording. I removed it, but an IP user knee-jerked and reverted the whole junk back in again, followed by a well-meaning but IMHO ineficcent user inserting a bunch of maintainance tags. This whole paragraph should go, I see no need to cling to such sub-standard writing.-- Seelefant (talk) 17:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Disagree on neutrality. The criticism, albeit removed, is relevant for as long as 'foobar' is in use. -Mardus /talk 03:32, 17 April 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm surprised there's no mention of it being used in digital logic design. Prior to software taking over the world, there was the rise of digital design. You'd have a bunch of combinatorial logic that would output some signal (or collection of signals) that you mark as "foo". The NOT of that signal would be "foobar" (foo).

Man, it's tough to read those example phrases, the fact that they are written like that (using inline quotations within an abstract narrative), despite what should be used in this; it is peculiar to see that stylization in the context of a Wikipedia article, stylistically, under the auspice of proper writing (for the sake of abstraction in non-fic. online encyclopedia.

Every time I read it... My brain automatically goes: '*Derp!*' 24.246.236.191 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:31, 27 August 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I admit that the fact the EECS buildings were adjacent to Building 20 is an anachronism. Hackers were using "foo" and "bar" in the 50's before EECS had buildings there. At least, not the ones currently there. I leave it to a better historian than myself to uncover how close Building 20 was to the original LISP community. For all I know, LISP was invented in Building 20. As for my other additions to this section today, I was there 1980-1984. I know what I'm talking about. -- tbc (talk) 17:30, 14 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Having been there is not sufficient to remove sourced claims and add unsourced claims. You may be right, but you need some evidence beyond your own memories to make those fairly significant changes. —Torchiest ^talk/_edits 19:59, 14 October 2010 (UTC)Reply[reply]

is some computer programs the variable foobar apears. for german natives it reads like "furchtbar" - an attribute to something terrible. i guess there war some german military adviser in the vietnam war who's vocabulary contained a world for something like "terrible ugly". i heard somewere on the radio the marines call walky talkies in the end only "foobar" was understood. which sounds like the britisch "lurking horror" or so. the eymology sounds like that red from here in germany. in the movie rambo "krautmann" apears as a warrior adviser. some veterans of the vietnam war are done with the state. so what is the right etymology of the word foobar in american english ?

not signed so i leave the article to the americans to find some truth in wp. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.234.253.145 (talk) 09:45, 10 October 2011 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Colloquial usage of the term (which I know rather spelled as phoo-ba) in English in place of "mistake", "mishap" has always made me assume a French etymology actually, in that it's rather derived from faux pas. Would be great if anybody could find a source for anything like that. --79.193.31.235 (talk) 02:46, 5 April 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

First lettes of Runes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes#Elder_Futhark_.282nd_to_8th_c..29 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.134.76.200 (talk) 06:04, 12 May 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A simple German-English dictionary search confirms the translation as "awful", "dreadful", "terrible", etc. Is a standard online dictionary a reliable source to be cited in the main page, since the translation is missing a citation? --Chocoholic Jedi (talk) 15:11, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cab Calloway and his Orchestra recorded "Foo A Little Ballyhoo" in New York City, September 18, 1944.

Someone posted a live performance broadcast August 14 1945 from The New Zanzibar New York City: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTfMC6h3lTY

[I have no idea who wrote it or when the score was copyrighted, so I can't add it to the article.]

Fubab: Beyond All Belief - We know how "fouled" up things are, we simply cannot believe it. I coined 'fubab' sometime in the mid-eighties while attending Arizona State University. If anyone knows where I might have heard it before that time, please let me know. Hpfeil (talk) 20:29, 27 May 2012 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Is that PHP example supposed to be the direct analog of the code above and below it? Constructing an array and then "imploding" it, while the other two are simple concats? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Moreover: Can anything PHP actually be called "code"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.4.245.215 (talk) 16:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No information about how baz and qux got included? —howcheng {chat} 22:47, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Baz and quux are from MIT, probably ITS slang. "The Great Quux" was Guy Steele's nickname at MIT in the late '70s and his nom-de-plume as a humorous artist. They were listed in the Jargon File and ESR's expanded version "The New Hacker's Dictionary". -- Resuna (talk) 16:17, 23 April 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

1 April 2001. Is this a cause for concern? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.254.47.175 (talk) 15:15, 17 September 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Was FOO displayed or F00. Because if you're working with something with 12 bits, loading a psw or register with F00 might be meaningful (or just funny if you know what "foo" is). Sort of a corollary to the mythic trouble report "Equipment doesn't work when selector knob is in the zero fox fox position". If so, the Foo in data processing may be a chicken and egg with F00.

I'm an IT guy of 23 years experience, I always understood Foobar to be derived from military slang Fubar [1] - at least thats how the ex-Vietnam veterans who taught me IT used it. Eworrall (talk) 17:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In Python, instead of using Foobar as a Metasyntactic variable, the community (and examples) generally use the placeholders "eggs", "ham", and "spam" from the Monty Python sketch. Should we add this in? — Preceding unsigned comment added by LawfulLazy (talk • contribs) 20:45, 16 July 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I would like to translate this page into Swedish but I get the following error message:

Detta är en pågående översättning av KartikMistry. Se till att du samordnar med användaren som översatte den nuvarande översättningen.

This error message means:

There is a current translation by KartikMistry. Be sure that you coordinate with the user who translated the current translation.

I've been getting this for a long time now and the button to abandon the translation doesn't work. Please help someone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Huey Duck (talk • contribs) 17:29, 20 January 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A meta-syntactic variable is one which holds a piece of syntax to be substituted in its place.

The parameters of macros are meta-syntactic.

Most uses of foo and bar in example program code are not "meta"; they are just ordinary identifiers.

The ANSI Common Lisp standard simply calls them "nonsense words": http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/CommonLISP/HyperSpec/Body/sec_1-4-1-6.html

The programmer doesn't have to replace foo with a different identifier; it is possible to just foo. Sometimes entire, working samples of code use foo and bar. They can be taken verbatim and executed: no syntactic substitution takes place to replace foo or bar with anything else.

• True, you don't have to replace them, it's just that they are generally used as pedagogical placeholders "you have a variable say int foo..." with no intention that the listener will actually use the variable "foo" unless they're a lisp hacker. -- Resuna (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A meta-syntactic variable occurs in a statement like "Your home page is located at server.example.com/user-pages/<USERNAME>/index.html." Here, <USERNAME> must be replaced with the instance of the user name; the URL with the uninstantiated meta-syntactic variable isn't correct; nobody's user name would ever be <USERNAME> with angle brackets and all.

KazKylheku (talk) 21:33, 25 April 2018 (UTC)Reply[reply]

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Suppose we have two objects, foo and bar.. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. PamD 16:58, 12 November 2019 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The "Examples in language" section is a bit silly. The examples are not uses of foobar in language as a placeholder. This article is about the placeholder so the section is irrelevant to this article. Some of them could be on the disambiguation page though. SpinningSpark 10:46, 19 December 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]