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View Full Version : What's with the 'foo' thing?!



geo909
June 14th, 2008, 11:28 AM
Hi everybody,

I'm pretty curious. In every manual/guide/howto/textbook etc
there is an example that uses a file, it names it "foo"!

What's with the 'foo' anyway?!:confused:

vishzilla
June 14th, 2008, 11:30 AM
here you go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOo

geo909
June 14th, 2008, 11:38 AM
I see..
I'm disappointed, I was expecting something more meaningful! :)

dacorr
June 14th, 2008, 11:39 AM
Yup i agree, when i was training as a Software Engineer they always made me create programs that used "Foo" then "Bar" as output files or strings.

Dac

vishzilla
June 14th, 2008, 11:41 AM
I see..
I'm disappointed, I was expecting something more meaningful! :)

'Foo' does sound good

koenn
June 14th, 2008, 12:05 PM
I see..
I'm disappointed, I was expecting something more meaningful! :)

it has all the meaning it needs to have within the context where it's used.
how much more meaningful can you get ?

Barrucadu
June 14th, 2008, 01:24 PM
Foo, Bar and Baz are incredibly meaningful! Just like "Hello, world!" is :)

geo909
June 14th, 2008, 07:53 PM
it has all the meaning it needs to have within the context where it's used.
how much more meaningful can you get ?

Come on guys, I was just kidding (see the smiley over there?)

geo909
June 14th, 2008, 07:54 PM
Foo, Bar and Baz are incredibly meaningful! Just like "Hello, world!" is :)

"Goodbye cruel world" would sound better!

koenn
June 14th, 2008, 08:05 PM
"Goodbye cruel world" would sound better!

It's indeed a sad, sad world where tongue-in-cheek isn't recognized if it doesn't come with :) 's all over the place.

KingTermite
June 14th, 2008, 09:04 PM
here you go http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOo

I saw the link to the wikipedia page and thought, "how could they have a wikipedia entry....it means nothing". Then I went to the wikipedia page, and they took a whole page to say "it means nothing". :rolleyes:

Tundro Walker
June 14th, 2008, 10:26 PM
I thought it was just computer jockeys ripping off the military FUBAR acronym, since programming tends to have its FUBAR moments.

Too bad they didn't rip off the "John Wayne Toilet Paper" analogy ...

"It's rough. It's tough. And it won't take s*** off nobody."

MDSmith2
June 14th, 2008, 10:29 PM
I see..
I'm disappointed, I was expecting something more meaningful! :)
Ok then, it means a wonderful world were everyone uses linux and not windows and wine can run any program on earth (and some from mars) and gasoline is free:).

koenn
June 14th, 2008, 11:26 PM
I see..
I'm disappointed, I was expecting something more meaningful! :)

'foo' is etymologically related to the Taoist concept of 'fu', which means luck or Good Fortune. Programmers use it in the hope that it will help them write bug-free code that will run long and prosper.

lisati
June 14th, 2008, 11:34 PM
I thought it was just computer jockeys ripping off the military FUBAR acronym, since programming tends to have its FUBAR moments.

Too bad they didn't rip off the "John Wayne Toilet Paper" analogy ...

"It's rough. It's tough. And it won't take s*** off nobody."
Or the Star Trek analogy: "What does the Star Ship Enterprise have in common with toilet paper?.......They both circle Uranus and wipe off Klingons"

geonik250
June 15th, 2008, 01:23 AM
One very insteresting use of foo i have come across is in the book "The art of unix programming" by Eric Steven Raymond. Appendix D. Rootless Root: The Unix Koans of Master Foo. I don't know if it is ok with forum rules to make a citation of the material here but i assure you it is quite amusing.

geo909
June 15th, 2008, 02:07 PM
'foo' is etymologically related to the Taoist concept of 'fu', which means luck or Good Fortune. Programmers use it in the hope that it will help them write bug-free code that will run long and prosper.

Guess wikipedia needs an update on that!

thrasher6900
June 15th, 2008, 03:21 PM
Ha! Foo is my nic-name.:lolflag:

sailor2001
June 15th, 2008, 09:39 PM
some men smoke, but FOO men chew