'foo bar' <- What's the meaning of?

[Chris Torek]

Please, before asking about `foo', read the introduction to the net and
ask locally.  It always creates a stream of interminable partial, wrong,
or otherwise not-quite-perfect answers which then cause further followups
like this one.

The word `foo' has been around for a long time.  It appeared in old
`Smokey Stover' cartoons in the 1920s and/or 30s (often on a license
plate or other out-of-the-way place).  The connection between `foo',
`bar', and `foobar' and `fubar' is obvious; the connection between this
foo and the one in the cartoons is less so.

In WWII the armed forces came up with a whole series of acronyms,
including FUBAR, SNAFU, and JANFU (F-ed Up Beyond All Recognition;
Situation Normal---All F-ed Up; Joint Army-Navy F-Up).

In the 1970s engineers at DEC designed the `Star' (the VAX-11/780)
and snuck a `FUBAR' register into the Unibus adapter.

In the 1950s and early 1960s the TMRC (Tech Model Railroad Club) at
MIT made much use of many `nonsense words' which eventually became
`hacker's jargon'.  For details, see _The_Hacker's_Dictionary_ by
Guy L. Steel Jr.  You will find some of the above and a great deal
more (e.g., the distinction between frob and tweak).
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris
	(New campus phone system, active sometime soon: +1 301 405 2750)