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Mohd Maqbool Alam
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 5,715 Pointswhat is foo?
i always saw many programmer type in their code the word foo sometime as variable etc explain the word what is this ?
3 Answers
Simon Woodard
6,545 PointsIt doesn't mean anything, it's a term used because the variable isn't important to the lesson, but the complete code is. In working code 'foo' would never be used
Chris Malcolm
2,909 Pointsthey're just placeholders..interesting stuff about their history though! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
James Barnett
39,199 PointsThe definitive answer on the history of foo RFC3092
James Barnett
39,199 PointsIn computer science, programmers use metasyntactic variables to describe a placeholder name or an alias term commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion or an arbitrary member of a class of things under discussion. The use of a metasyntactic variable is helpful in freeing a programmer from creating a logically named variable, which is often useful when creating or teaching examples of an algorithm. The word
foois the principal example.
from: https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Metasyntactic_variable.html
James Gill
Courses Plus Student 34,936 PointsJames Gill
Courses Plus Student 34,936 PointsIt's a fake word, used as a placeholder. You'll often see it paired with "bar", as in "foo bar". It's a programming term borrowed from the colorful old US military term "Fubar", which means--ahem--"fu*ked up beyond all recognition".
Ironically, In military slang, it means something (or someone, etc.) that's utterly broken or unusable.