RFC 3092 – Etymology of "Foo" (2001)

There is an entire paper looking at the history, meaning and cultural significance of the foo, bar, baz words: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-019-00387-2

A lot of programming languages uses "Foo bar" during introduction without actually explaining why "Foo" and why "bar". Before the age of Google and Internet it was perhaps one of the most common question from speakers of non-English language.

Being largely self taught, I ended reinventing a lot of lingo myself. My placeholder words are generally “blah”, “yo”, and “fart” unless other people are reading the code.

I never claimed I was terribly mature.

This location in Switzerland reminded me of some placeholder Python code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Pass

I stole this handle from GLS many many years ago and I use it pretty much everywhere. I guess I just love the idea of metasyntactic variables, and using that phrase whenever anyone asks me about my handle!

funny how in italian the "Metasyntactic variable"[1] are "pippo", "pluto" and "paperino"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable#Italian

> First on the standard list of metasyntactic variables used in syntax examples (bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud)

I've seen foo, bar, baz, qu+x, plugh and xyxxy actually in use, not the others.

I've not used "qux" or followed the convention of adding more u's. From me it's been just foo, bar, baz, quux and then some Monty Python inspired ones: spam, ni, ecky, ptong.

Although eventually I learned enough about how to name things that I don't feel the temptation any more. I'll gladly pay that bit of joylessness to understand myself months later.

April 1, 2001

I don’t understand how this article is not at the top of all times

naming is hard.

my advice to junior programmers after i see them agonising over a name - "just call it x or foo for now, you are going to change it later anyway"

f*kt up beyond all recognition. semper fidelis

i first heard "foo bar" from eric allman at berkeley office of britton-lee, mid 1980s. i vaguely recall eric wrote a column about history of "foo bar".

Echoes of ARPANET.

Now, tell us about "ZQX3".

No mention of “baz”