Must we go through this AGAIN? (was: Re: Meaning of foo and bar)

[Jonathan I. Kamens]

  Well, it feels like only a couple of weeks ago that I was
complaining about multitudes of responses being posted on the net when
they should have been sent in E-mail.  Then, alongs come someone who
asks what "grep" stands for, and suddenly everybody's an expert who
has to post his expert knowledge to the net instead of sending the
questioner the answer in E-mail (yes, I know that some of you knew the
"correct" answer, but that's not the point) for him to summarize.
Now, we've got another intelligent request which shouldn't cause a
flood of answers, but that flood has already started:

In article <3345 at uokmax.UUCP> jkmedcal at uokmax.UUCP (Jeff K Medcalf) writes:
>Please mail me the meaning of foo and bar.  They seem to be always used for
>throw away files.  What is the historical significance, if any, of such terms?

  I have seen at least three responses to this posted publicly to the
net, and I'll wager there will be many more.  I sent an answer to the
poster of this message less than a day after he posted it, and I
quoted directly from the MIT/Stanford hacker's dictionary, which gives
the FUBAR and the Pogo etymology of the words foo and bar (but this is
irrelevant).

  Are there so many people on the net who don't know the meaning of
the word "mail"?  For heaven's sake, even if someone who asks a
question DOESN'T ask for answers to be mailed, you should mail them
anyway, ESPECIALLY if you expect that the question is simple enough
that a lot of people will know the answer!

  PLEASE, people, don't answer this question to the net.  If you have
an answer, send it in E-mail, and I am sure Mr. Medcalf will
eventually post the responses he has received in one summary message.

Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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