Actually, the American military acronym 'fubar' goes back at least to World War II.
The use of 'foo' and 'bar' as metasyntactic variables probably dates to the the lisp
hackers at the MIT AI lab in the 50's or 60's , before unix. Foo and bar function
like 'x' or 'n' in the traditional mathematical exposition 'let x = n". They remain
in common usage in the unix world and its derivatives, because of their brevity and
style.
>>> Jos Boumans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/16 8:33 am >>>
it comes from the vietnam war iirc (watch full metal jacket if you want some
'insight' ;-)
it is originally 'fubar' or Fucked Up Beyond Any Recognition (pardon the expletives)
so, us perl geeks use 'foo' and 'bar' as standard variable names in examples now...
So much for a short stroll thru history =)
Regards,
Jos Boumans
ber kessels wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Maybe a silly question but where does foo-bar or foobar refer to?
>
> Everyone uses it in perl, but I cannot find the origin of it.
> I am not english (I am Duch), but even my english teacher didn't know it, he had
> even never heard of it.
>
> I am just curious that's all.
>
> Thanx for reading
>
> Ber
>
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