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)