Metasyntactic Variable: Difference between revisions

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A [[Metasyntactic Variable]] -- also called a "Placeholder Name" -- is a word or phrase used in the place of another word or phrase in any of several contexts. By mathematical analogy, a metasyntactic variable is a word that is a variable for other words, just as in algebra letters are used as variables for numbers.

A '''Metasyntactic Variable''' -- also called a "Placeholder Name" -- is a word or phrase used in the place of another word or phrase in any of several contexts. By mathematical analogy, a metasyntactic variable is a word that is a variable for other words, just as in algebra letters are used as variables for numbers.

In computing and technology contexts, these words are commonly found in source code and are intended to be modified or substituted before real-world usage. The words '''foo''' and '''bar''' are good examples as they are used in over 330 [[w:Internet Engineering Task Force|Internet Engineering Task Force]] [[w:Request for Comments|Requests for Comments]], the documents which define foundational internet technologies like HTTP (websites), TCP/IP, and email protocols. Metasyntactic variables are used to name entities such as variables, functions, and commands whose exact identity is unimportant and serve only to demonstrate a concept, which is useful for teaching programming. A short examination of Metasyntactic Variables as used in computing can be found [https://blog.codinghorror.com/variable-foo-and-other-programming-oddities/ at the ''Coding Horror'' blog].