>Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 03:47:38 -0600
>From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: stupid question
>
>this is one of those questions you keep hoping you'll run into a definitive
>answer for, because you think it should be obvious.
>okay, is "foo" and "foobar" intended as generic wildcards? Or does "foo"
>have a meaning to a computer?
There was a real good history of how this word came into use
(including a possible link to an early 1900's cartoon) in an Internet
usage book I once read. If I can think of the name of the book, I'll
pass it on, but I think the name of the author was someone named
'Hahn'. Anyway, it came into widespread use by the military in WWII,
but was spelled 'FUBAR', meaning 'Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition'.
How it came into use by computer programmers, I believe, was because
of it's use as temporary variables to help debug 'Fouled Up'
programs. If they needed one scratch variable, they used 'foobar'.
If they needed 2, they used 'foo' and 'bar'.
It might also pop up if you search for one of those 'Internet
Folklore' or 'Urban Folklore' sites on the internet, or check the
FAQ's of newsgroups like news.announce.newusers, news.misc,
news.newusers.questions, etc.
Maybe you can help me on one:
What does IIRC mean, that I've started seeing lately? I haven't seen
it in any lists of common internet acronyms.
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] USA
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