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metasyntactic variable
<grammar> Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but
often used for any 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.
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. 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 qux before
quux.
bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on).
foo, bar, thud, grunt: This series was popular at CMU.
Other CMU-associated variables include ack, barf, foo, and
gorp.
foo, bar, fum: This series is reported to be common at
Xerox PARC.
fred, barney: See the entry for fred. These tend to be
Britishisms.
toto, titi, tata, tutu: Standard series of metasyntactic
variables among francophones.
corge, grault, 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, zot: Helsinki University of Technology,
Finland.
blarg, wibble: New Zealand
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.
[Jargon File]
(1995-11-13)
Try this search on OneLook / Google
Nearby terms:
Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor « metaphone « metaprogram « metasyntactic variable » metasyntax » META tag » Meta-Vlisp
This article was derived from the Free Online Dictionary of Computers and is available under ther terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
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