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Thread: The word "Foo"
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2019-08-25, 12:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2011
The word "Foo"
Let's discus it.
I have a question to start us off: what part-of-speech is it? I thought it was a pronoun, because it can replace a noun, but apparently I was wrong because someone thought I was discussing two separate "contexts" when I mentioned that it was a pronoun and a coding foo. (I just used the subject of this discussion within said discussion! Neat!)
What would it be called? Maybe "provariable" or "prostring" but those both sound kind of silly... which I suppose they should, since comparing naturalistic languages and programming ones is an admittedly-silly thing to do in the first place!
On a related note, why does "proverb" mean "traditional metaphorical story" rather than "word that replaces a verb" anyway? That's confusing.
I use braces (also known as "curly brackets") to indicate sarcasm. If there are none present, I probably believe what I am saying; should it turn out to be inaccurate trivia, please tell me rather than trying to play along with an apparent joke I don't know I'm making.
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2019-08-25, 12:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
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2019-08-25, 12:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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2019-08-25, 01:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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I use braces (also known as "curly brackets") to indicate sarcasm. If there are none present, I probably believe what I am saying; should it turn out to be inaccurate trivia, please tell me rather than trying to play along with an apparent joke I don't know I'm making.
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2019-08-25, 01:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
Foo, like the rest of the larger family of placeholder names, does have commonality with pronouns, in that it stands in for a noun (and are used grammatically as nouns). The key difference is that pronouns are intended for referring to a noun specified elsewhere in the context, whereas with a placeholder name the context itself is what's important. Like, with code examples using foo, it doesn't really matter that a variable is named "foo" as opposed to some other name; what's important is that there's a variable.
Unless you're talking about how Mr. T will "pity the foo", in which case I assure you "foo" is actually just how "fool" sounds when he says it.FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
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2019-08-25, 02:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
For what it may be worth, the Jargon File as maintained by Eric S. Raymond describes foo as the canonical example of a metasyntactic variable.
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2019-08-25, 02:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
"foo" and the related "bar" actually have nothing to do with programming but are now used as placeholder or temporary names in contexts such as programming. They are derived from an older military acronym, FUBAR. What FUBAR stands for is not forum appropriate.
A pronoun can replace a noun to refer to something it replaces. A placeholder is used when there is nothing to replace.
I have never heard foo used in a LGBTAI context.
"My Hobby: Replacing your soap with gravy" by rtg0922, Doll and Clint "Rawhide" Eastwood by Sneak
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2019-08-25, 06:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
Last edited by Fyraltari; 2019-08-25 at 06:57 AM.
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2019-08-25, 08:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
You can't just drop "Foo" in as a name and have it make sense.
"Bob walked in, he then walked out."
cannot become
"Bob walked in, Foo then walked out."
and mean the same thing.
"Sarah had dinner, she then tidied up the house."
cannot become
"Sarah had dinner, Foo then tidied up the house."
and mean the same thing.
In both cases you've added a second person.
Compare this conversation:
"What is the name of the first man who walked in here?"
"I don't know, let's call him Foo."
"Well, Foo just dropped his book."
"I'll go pick it up for him."
"The second man needs help too, I'll go assist him."
In the absence of knowing the person's name, they have given him a name. That temporary name now refers only to him, while "him" can still apply to anyone.
"My Hobby: Replacing your soap with gravy" by rtg0922, Doll and Clint "Rawhide" Eastwood by Sneak
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2019-08-25, 11:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
Last edited by halfeye; 2019-08-25 at 11:00 AM.
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2019-08-25, 01:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
"Proverb" comes from the Latin " pro" meaning "to put forward" and "verbe" meaning "word/speech/story". Literally all it means is a story that's been put forward as an example.
Meanwhile "pronoun" is from "pro" and "nomen" meaning "name". Literally it means something you put forward in place of a name.
They're etymological cousins. One does not have prescedence over the other.
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2019-08-25, 04:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2015
Re: The word "Foo"
"Foo" isn't the only F-word that can act as multiple parts of speech.
… I am speaking, of course, of "fight." You have "to fight," the verb, that can be modified to become a participle, a gerund, etc. like most verbs. You also have "fight", a noun with a related--but distinct--definition that can do its own. I have no clue why our word for "that thing where people are fighting" ended up the same as the verb, as opposed to a similar word (i.e., "fly" and "flight"), or a distinct word altogether.
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2019-08-25, 05:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever seen Foo used. The dictionary online gave me two origins; FUBAR getting used in coding to mean a bar of code, and an old Scottish word for love.
Also the phrase "oh foo" as an expression of mild and old timey disappointment.
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2019-08-25, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
Re: The word "Foo"
History and etymology is fairly well discussed on wikipedia; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar
I was wondering what it's relationship to 'foo fighter' might be, and that too is clarified on wikipedia; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter
As for trying to determine the part of speech the word is, it really is just slang, and used however a group of folks start using it as. And it seems more times than not they are not using it with any concern for parts of speech or grammar :)
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2019-08-25, 07:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: The word "Foo"
I believe that "foo" can generally be translated as "something". Its value is that it makes it easier to differentiate between two "somethings", by calling them "foo" and "bar".
In coding, we generally don't care exactly what "foo" is. It just means "something is here, what it is is beyond the scope of our present discussion but we need to allow for it."
It's often used hypothetically, as in "Suppose (foo) happens, and this variable gets set to (bar)?" In this case the speaker is talking about something unforeseeable, and implying that we may need more exception handling to keep the code running smoothly in the event of the unexpected."None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain
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2019-08-27, 05:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The word "Foo"
This is just crazy talk, u
;)
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2019-08-28, 03:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-08-29, 12:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-08-31, 03:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dijon, France