Metasyntactic Variable: Difference between revisions

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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].

Outside of computing contexts, these are words that functional grammatically as nouns and that can refer to objects, places or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed. This can include such terms as "watchamacallit", "thingamabob", "dojiggy" and "wossname" (the latter being primarily a UK usage), or a term as simple as "thing". Most of these words can be documented to at least the 19th century.

Outside of computing contexts, these are words that functional grammatically as nouns and that can refer to objects, places or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed. This can include such terms as "watchamacallit", "thingamabob", "dojiggy" and "wossname" (the latter being primarily a UK usage), or a term as simple as "thing". Most of these words and usages can be documented to at least the 19th century, but no doubt date back much further.

Some fields have their own specific placeholder terminology. For example, "widget"<ref>Not to be confused with [[Widget Series|our usage of the term]]</ref> in economics, engineering and electronics, or "Blackacre" and "John Doe" or "Jane Doe" in law.