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wats foo/bar ?

 
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these two words are used very commonly on various sites..any idea about thier origin or what does they mean ?
 
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i dont know their origins only what they stand for. it is like saying YourClass or /path/ it is a way of generalizing.
 
Amit Agrawal
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They are used for classes (to generalize)..thats ok...but I meant wats their literal meaing ?

Originally posted by Randall Twede:
i dont know their origins only what they stand for. it is like saying YourClass or /path/ it is a way of generalizing.


 
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Foobar is a corruption of FUBAR.
Source (US?) Army.
Short for F***ed Up Beyond All Repair .
A short and rather effective way to provide a status report about some peice of equipment
[This message has been edited by Sahir Shibley (edited September 01, 2001).]
 
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foo/bar, FUBAR, FUBAR, fubar......
Hey! I am learning something here
I'll try to remember that.

Originally posted by Sahir Shibley:
Foobar is a corruption of FUBAR.
Source (US?) Army.
Short for F***ed Up Beyond All Repair .
A short and rather effective way to provide a status report about some peice of equipment
[This message has been edited by Sahir Shibley (edited September 01, 2001).]


 
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Check out this entry in The New Hacker's Dictionary.
 
Amit Agrawal
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Thanks Jim n Sahir. Now I know wat does it mean but I wonder why sun guys have picked up these names for thier example classes ? any guesses ?
 
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Actually, the "Foo Bar" tale is reportedly even wilder than that!
I was looking up comic strips on the Internet a while back and checked out a rather off-the-wall one from long ago called "Smokey Stover". Smokey was a fireman, and he and his chief were often seen scooting around town in a quirky compact 2-wheeled fire engine bearing the front license plate "FOO 123". The story goes that the "foo" actually bounced in and out of popular usage several times before becoming settled in the military use. FUBAR, I've also heard rendered as "Fouled (ahem) Up Beyond All Recognition" - which describes more than one program I've seen .
Stories read on the Internet should be taken skeptically, but the earlier "FOO"'s claim was pretty well backed up.
Then there's "Bazz Fazz" - two other popular code fillers - popularized as a term of disparagement and disbelief in another comic strip (Pogo).
The REAL irony of all this is that I discovered the Smokey Stover connection while trying to find out the meaning of ANOTHER Smokeyism - "Notary Sojak".
 
mister krabs
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Originally posted by Amit Agrawal*:
Thanks Jim n Sahir. Now I know wat does it mean but I wonder why sun guys have picked up these names for thier example classes ? any guesses ?


It has nothing to do with Sun. foo/bar have been used going to back at least to C days.
 
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FooBar comes from Fubar! Which is jarrhead language (Marines) for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
 
Jim Yingst
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All of which is explained in the article I referenced earlier.
 
Amit Agrawal
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I agree Thomas but still my question is the same. why did sun guys picked up these name ? didn't they know about its origin (like me)? or just used without giving much thought to it ?
(atleast I don't think they intend literal meaning of fubar about their own examples !!).

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
It has nothing to do with Sun. foo/bar have been used going to back at least to C days.


 
Anonymous
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foo bar is not only used by Sun, but by many programmers in many languages.
 
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FUBAR= F'd Up Beyond All Redemption?
 
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foo bar has been around since the early 70's in the computer science domain.
Even though the original def. is the same as our military friends, foo bar is used when someone needs a quick TEMPOARY name for something (file, dir, variable, etc.)
-rl-
 
Anonymous
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I think the phrase "notary sojak" is derived, like many phrases in war, from the expressions at the moment of truth -- when people are injured or killed. The classic "moment of truth", from ancient times, is the moment of death. In the modern
military, soldiers are carefully trained to view the
possibility of their death with humor. Life is, after all,
a wet phenomenon.

One of the possibilities that came to mind, and the one
that seems most persistent, is that it came from a soldier
who either had hoped to become a real, official soldier,
or was led to understand that he was an official soldier --
a "notarized soldier". When his moment of truth came,
his final protest was something like ""I'm a notarized
soldier" or, more in keeping with the pronunciation,
"I'm a notarized sojer". He didn't quite begin the phrase
properly, and never got a chance to finish it himself --
it came out "notary sojak". The "ak" was a phrase used
to describe antiaircraft fire, which was called "ack-ack".

Bill Mauldin's soldiers sometimes referred to themselves
as "sojers".
Mike Lewis
mglewis@qwest.net
 
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