What is foobar

Most of the basic level programmers know the hello world programs but while the getting started with string concatenation they came through a non-familiar word “foobar”

What is that “foobar”

• “Foo” and “bar” as metasyntactic variables were popularised by MIT and DEC, the first references are in work on LISP and PDP-1 and Project MAC from 1964 onwards.

• Many of these people were in MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club, where we find the first documented use of “foo” in tech circles in 1959 (and a variant in 1958).

• Both “foo” and “bar” (and even “baz”) were well known in popular culture, especially from Smokey Stover and Pogo comics, which will have been read by many TMRC members.

• Also, it seems likely the military FUBAR contributed to their popularity.