foobar

:foobar: n. [very common] Another widely used metasyntactic variable see foo for etymology. Probably originally propagated through DECsystem manuals by Digital Equipment Corporation ( DEC in 1960s and early 1970s; confirmed sightings there go back to 1972. Hackers do _not_ generally use this to mean FUBAR in either the slang or jargon sense. See also Fred Foobar In RFC1639, "FOOBAR" was made an abbreviation for "FTP Operation Over Big Address Records", but this was an obvious backronym It has been plausibly suggested that "foobar" spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because "foo bar" parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal; if a digital signal is coded so that a positive voltage or high current condition represents a "1", then a horizontal bar is commonly placed over the signal label.

Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =

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