What does 'foo' really mean?

Question

I hope this qualifies as a programming question, as in any programming tutorial, you eventually come across \'foo\' in the code examples. (yeah, right?)

what does \'

Answer 1

foo = File or Object. It is used in place of an object variable or file name.

Answer 2

It's a metasyntactic variable.

Answer 3

Among my colleagues, the meaning (or perhaps more accurately - the use) of the term "foo" has been to serve as a placeholder to represent an example for a name. Examples include, but not limited to, yourVariableName, yourObjectName, or yourColumnName.

Today, I avoid using "foo" and prefer using this type of named substitution for a couple of reasons.

• In my earlier days, I originally found the use of "foo" as a placement in any example to represent something as f'd-up to be confusing. I wanted a working example, not something that was foobar.
• Your results may vary, but I always, 100%, everytime, never-failed, got more follow-up questions about the meaning of the actual variable where "foo" was used.