Talk:Foobar

Informal
I'd like to see something to the effect: "foo" and "bar" are generally not used in formal documentation. They are something of an "in joke", and mark text as being meant for fellow coders, as not having been (or intended to be) formally reviewed - certainly not by persons outside the hacker culture. They may indicate that code is to do with a subject that is technical with respect to computer science itself - one might see them in comments on code relating to compilers or operating systems, but not in code relating to end user interfaces or business-level logic.

Oh really? Maybe you should have a look at the current C++ ISO standard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.91.172.42 (talk) 18:09, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * That's just sad. "Foobar" is just silly hacker jargon. 83.255.36.203 (talk) 17:59, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * But that also supports one of the parent's assertions - that it's a CS-specific nomenclature - by being used in a programming language spec. I agree that it's not about formality, but more about being CS-specific. I'd also like to note that ISO standards, by virtue of being largely written by industry insiders, vary wildly in terms of style of language (let alone vocabulary) used, and hence "foobar"'s use in a very specific ISO standard doesn't strongly imply its widespread use, nor its suitability thereof. C xong (talk) 02:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to clarify that 'foobar', 'foo', 'bar' and 'baz' are psuedocode terms and should never be used in real code. Generally psuedocode involves simplistic examples for reference only by other programmers and the use of the words such as 'foo' and 'bar' help to identify the code as such. It is not a hacker culture thing. Use of these naming conventions in real code is highly frowned upon and those who do are 'hacks', not 'hackers'. I agree with the above poster that just because the terms are referenced in an ISO standard has no bearing whatsoever. It is extremely bad practice to use such words in genuine code. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.243.44.2 (talk) 18:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

I recall a systems programmer working on Digital Equipment Machines (DEC) VAXes in the early 1980s, grinning that Digital had an acronym -- FUBAR -- for "Failed Unibus Address Register" -- and it accurately described the state of the entire system once such a catastrophic fault had happened. Someone with access to Unibus architecture/programming manual(s) may be able to verify this -- in which case, the "citation needed" marker on the Digital Equipment Machines reference could be resolved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.2.61.58 (talk) 02:42, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

Oddly enough I can provide a citation for this. In DEC's VaxBI options handbook, Published 1986 by Digital Equipment Corporation, Chapter 12, page 10 the FUBAR register is defined as:

Failed Unibus Address Register (FUBAR): When a VAXBI to Unibus transaction results in a SSYN timeout, the FUBAR holds the failed Unibus address sent by the VAXBI master. The FUBAR address is bb+728

And yes, when that is set, the computer is totally FUBAR. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.193.143.46 (talk) 01:57, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Scram switch, etc.
Was FOO displayed or F00. Because if you're working with something with 12 bits, loading a psw or register with F00 might be meaningful (or just funny if you know what "foo" is). Sort of a corollary to the mythic trouble report "Equipment doesn't work when selector knob is in the zero fox fox position". If so, the Foo in data processing may be a chicken and egg with F00.

"Suppose we have two objects, foo and bar." listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Suppose we have two objects, foo and bar.. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Pam D  16:58, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Examples in language
The "Examples in language" section is a bit silly. The examples are not uses of foobar in language as a placeholder. This article is about the placeholder so the section is irrelevant to this article. Some of them could be on the disambiguation page though. SpinningSpark 10:46, 19 December 2021 (UTC)