!?!? FOO???

[Loyde W. Hales II]

>In article <hart.647056068 at blackjack> hart at blackjack.dt.navy.mil (Michael Hart) writes:
>>In <13530001 at hp-and.HP.COM> panek at hp-and.HP.COM (Jon Panek) writes:

>>>	F003		Divide by zero
>>>	F001		Printer not ready
>>
>>>and the like.  When the machine ran into one of these, it would load the
>>>This explanation would go a long ways to explaining why "FOO" has
>>>appeared in the hacker community, as well as some support for its
>>>age.
>>
>>>Any agreement on this?

>>I would have to agree with the military origin; especially as 
>>FOO is usually seen in close proximity to it's brother variable,
>>BAR. 


In article <369 at demott.COM> kdq at demott.COM (Kevin D. Quitt) writes:

>    I dunnow.  It seems to me that given the FOO name for the errors,
>the BAR part would come right along (from the military).  It makes a lot
>more sense than converting FU to FOO. 

I disagree, for several reasons.

First, it is common to distort spellings, particularly when you are taking
spoken word.  Look at how many words in (American) English are mispelled
words (in British English).  Much less the number of words with multiple
spellings considered correct.

If you want to test this, though, go to an introductory course for Computer
Science and throw out terminology without writing it on the board.  Then give
a quiz.  I'll bet you'll get several mispellings and homonymns.

			       -
Personally, if someone said  *fu* to me, I'd think to spell it Foo, unless I
knew it had Oriental origins.

Besides, FOOBAR is a polite version of FUBAR anyway.

-=-

                                Department of Computer and Information Science
Loyde W. Hales, II                      The Ohio State University
lwh at cis.ohio-state.edu          2036 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, Ohio  43210