Notes on  METASYNTACTIC VARIABLE 

A name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is
under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under
discussion. The word FOO is the CANONICAL example. To avoid
confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use `foo' or other words
like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common
convention is that any filename beginning with a
metasyntactic-variable name is a SCRATCH file that may be deleted
at any time.

Metasyntactic variables are so called because (1) they are variables
in the metalanguage used to talk about programs etc; (2) they are
variables whose values are often variables (as in usages like "the
value of f(foo,bar) is the sum of foo and bar"). However, it has been
plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term "metasyntactic
variable" is that it sounds good. To some extent, the list of one's
preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur
both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and
as singletons. Here are a few common signatures:

FOO, BAR, BAZ, QUUX, quuux, quuuux...: MIT/Stanford usage,
now found everywhere (thanks largely to early versions of this
lexicon!). At MIT (but not at Stanford), BAZ dropped out of use for
a while in the 1970s and '80s. A common recent mutation of this
sequence inserts QUXbefore QUUX.
bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on).
FOO, BAR, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU. Other
CMU-associated variables include GORP.
FOO, BAR, bletch: Waterloo University. We are informed that the
CS club at Waterloo formerly had a sign on its door reading "Ye Olde
Foo Bar and Grill"; this led to an attempt to establish "grill" as
the third metasyntactic variable, but it never caught on.
FOO, BAR, fum: This series is reported to be common at XEROX
PARC.
FRED, jim, sheila, BARNEY: See the entry for FRED. These tend
to be Britishisms.
FLARP: Popular at Rutgers University and among GOSMACS hackers.
zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England).
shme Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/.
foo, bar, baz, bongo Yale, late 1970s.
spam, eggs PYTHON programmers.
snork Brown University, early 1970s.
FOO, BAR, zot Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.
blarg, WIBBLE New Zealand.
toto, titi, tata, tutu France.
pippo, pluto, paperino Italy. Pippo /pee�po/ and Paperino
/pa�per�ee'�no/ are the Italian names for Goofy and Donald Duck.
aap, noot, mies The Netherlands. These are the first words a child
used to learn to spell on a Dutch spelling board.
oogle, foogle, boogle; zork, gork, bork These two series (which may
be continued with other initial consonents) are reportedly common in
England, and said to go back to Lewis Carroll.

Of all these, only foo and bar are universal (and BAZ nearly so).
The compounds FOOBAR and foobaz also enjoy very wide currency. Some
jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; BARF and
MUMBLE, for example. See also COMMONWEALTH HACKISH for discussion
of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the
Commonwealth.

J3N Research Labs

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