Re: [xsl] FOO vs FO

[Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think we are asymptotically approaching some kind of "knowledge" on this 
important question.

My own folk etymology cortical implant tells me that "Foobar" is an 
adaptation of "FUBAR", a military acronym (originally ca. WWII) that stands 
for "f****d up beyond all recognition". As in "Situation normal -- foobar".

(Jim, "Fouled Up Beyond All Belief" would be "FUBAB" wouldn't it? but it'd 
get past your obscenity filter anyhow.)

How it got from that, to being CS nonsense-word placeholders, I dunno. But 
of course a great deal of early programming happened in the military. David 
Marston's explanation of "foo" from the Smokey Stover comic strip seems (to 
this ear) altogether plausible. Maybe when they needed a second one, since 
they had "foo" they went to "bar" since they all knew about "fubar" (and 
didn't care too much how it was spelled).

Anyone have a notion as to "baz"?

Anyway,
Wendell

At 07:58 AM 9/6/01, Doug wrote:
> Does anyone know why FOO was chosen to mean anything?
>
> >From the W3 site, in a message at
> "http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/msg00613.html";, someone asked
> "What does foo.bar mean in CSS?". The response was:
>
>         Ah, a puzzle!
>
>         1. The literal answer is probably not the answer the author is
> looking for.
>
>         2. `foo' and `bar' are commonly used as placeholders for arbitrary
> character strings.
>
> In XML Bible by E. Harold, page 52, the author says that FOO means "whatever
> you want it to". Further down, on page 517, we find that for formatting
> objects, the defacto standard prefix is "FO".
>
> Why was FOO and FO chosen instead of something less confusing? I can
> understand FO for formatting objects, but why FOO? Why not XXX or ABC??
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

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