A metasyntactic variable is 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 term originates from
computer programming and other technical contexts, and is commonly used in examples by
hackers and
programmers. The use of a metasyntactic variable is helpful in freeing a programmer from creating a logically named variable, although the invented term may also become sufficiently popular and enter the language as a
neologism. The word
foo is the canonical example.
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<
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)
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