Etymology of Foo, RFC 3092

[strredwolf]

We now have a standard on "foo", "bar", and "foobar". Check RFC 3092 here: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html

--
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";

[arhuman]

Im impatienly waiting for the RFC about toto, fred, barney, wombat, tata, titi, tutu, blarg, wibble which are used in other countries (source this post)

"Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)

[tilly]

Well fred and barney are two of the main characters from a popular kid's show The Flintstones. (And they were used in Learning Perl along with the rest of the cast.)

Perhaps, being French, you can give us more insight on why toto is a commonly used variable name there?

As for wombat, tutu, and titi, they are real things with a bit of the air of the ridiculous about them.

I have no clue about the others.

[arhuman]

I could indeed give some explanations but I fear they won't be as exhaustive as in the RFC 3092.

A LOT of french coders use toto (and its phonetic derivatives tata,tutu,titi).

'toto' has always been used as common name, in school
('toto is riding a bicyle a 10 mph, how long will it take to makes 25 miles ?')
or in common life where it's used in joke and examples.

It's part of our culture, just as I suppose you (english/american ?) use 'joe'.

The laziness factor is also inportant as 'toto' is even faster to type than 'azerty'(our 'qwerty') or '1234'.

"Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)

[TheoPetersen]

wombat is variously attributed as an acronym for "Waste Of Money, Brains And Time."

As a Datatrieve survivor, I've also used wombat now and then as a name for any kind of data collection.

[Maclir]

"fred" is a popular variable name, since it is easily types with the fingers of the left hand, in a neat "rolling flick" of the wrist.

Clue: see where the letters "f", "r', "e" and "d" are located on a standard qwerty keyboard.

[jcwren]

If you find files named 'arf', 'spot', and 'rover', it probably means I've been there.

--Chris

e-mail jcwren