terminologymetasyntactic-variable

Meaning of foo, bar, baz, etc

I've always wanted to know what the foo, bar, baz, etc... names mean.

Several times I've found these terms in scientific articles. Furthermore this terminology in some way serves as a standard for other exemplifications.

Does anyone know where these terms come from, and how to use them properly?

Solution

  • While this question borders on being outside the scope of Stack Overflow, I highly recommend the Wikipedia article on the matter:

    The History of Foobar

    To give a quick preview:

    The word foo originated as a nonsense word from the 1930s, the military term FUBAR emerged in the 1940s... The term foo fighter was used by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II to describe various UFOs or mysterious aerial phenomena. The first known use of the terms in print in a programming context appears in a 1965 edition of MIT's Tech Engineering News.