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Foo is a metasyntactic variable used heavily in computer science to represent concepts abstractly and can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea including the data, variables, functions, and commands just to name a few. Foo is commonly used with the metasyntactic variables bar and foobar. The word foo itself has no meaning and is merely a commonly used logical representation that is used much like the letters 'x' and 'y' in algebra. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Placeholder name. ... Computer scaence, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... In computer science, abstraction is a mechanism and practice to reduce and factor out details so that one can focus on a few concepts at a time. ... For other uses, see Data (disambiguation). ... In computer science and mathematics, a variable is a symbol denoting a quantity or symbolic representation. ... In general, a function is part of an answer to a question about why some object or process occurred in a system that evolved or was designed with some goal. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Bar is a metasyntactic variable used heavily in computer science to represent concepts abstractly and can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea including the data, variables, functions, and commands just to name a few. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with foo. ... Algebra is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of structure, relation and quantity. ...

Foo has entered the English language as a neologism due to its popularity in describing concepts in computer science and is considered by many to be the canonical example of a metasyntactic variable. It is used extensively in computer programming examples and pseudocode. This article cites very few or no references or sources. ... Canonical is an adjective derived from canon. ... Computer programming (often shortened to programming or coding) is the process of writing, testing, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. ... Pseudocode (derived from pseudo and code) is a compact and informal high-level description of a computer programming algorithm that uses the structural conventions of programming languages, but omits detailed subroutines, variable declarations or language-specific syntax. ...

Foo and bar paired together are apparently derived from FUBAR, but the Jargon File makes a reasonably good case that foo predates FUBAR. Look up FUBAR in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ...

Example (pseudocode)

 There are two functions: FOO and BAR FOO calls function BAR BAR returns the data BAZ 

When there is more than one such abstract entitity to reference, the terms bar and baz are also usually used to refer to the second and third entities, respectively, as shown above. (In other words, the term 'bar' implies the existence of a primary entity 'foo', and so on.) Bar is a metasyntactic variable used heavily in computer science to represent concepts abstractly and can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea including the data, variables, functions, and commands just to name a few. ...

The placeholders make this a template for any program fragment wherein one function calls another which returns data to the first.

See Also

• Placeholder name
• foobar
• Fubar
• bar
• Hello World
• Meta

Placeholder names are words that refer to objects or people whose names are either irrelevant or unknown in the context which it is being discussed. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with foo. ... Look up FUBAR in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Bar is a metasyntactic variable used heavily in computer science to represent concepts abstractly and can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea including the data, variables, functions, and commands just to name a few. ... A hello world program is a computer program that prints out Hello, world! on a display device. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

References

• RFC 3092, “Etymology of ‘Foo’”