Talk:Metasyntactic variable/Archive 1

message: PAGE ARCHIVED 20080114
kf4yfd (talk) 16:33, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

message: At Swansea University, the first two are almost always Fish and Wibble. e.g.
SELECT count(fish) FROM wibble WHERE foo=bar
is this in use elsewhere?
:I've heard of wibble. Fish is a new one on me, though. --Cuervo 11:26, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fish and Wibble 

message: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (and its brilliant variant "the quick young programmer jumped over the lazy old analist) Hello World should definately be linked from this page!
:And don't forget Lorem Ipsum. --Tinctorius 14:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Common sentences 

message: Alice and Bob, who are mentioned in this article, already have their own page as being the two most prominent characters in scenarios, often related to (secure) communication. Shouldn't it be a good idea to either merge the Alice and Bob-article with this article or make a new category for placeholder texts, placeholder characters and metasyntactic variables? --Tinctorius 14:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Alice' and 'Bob' don't sound like true metasyntaxvars. A true metasyntaxvar is like a placeholder for another name, which means that the truly true metasyntaxvars foo and bar can come in any order, and fill any role, varname, funcname, classname, etc.. 'Alice' and 'Bob' are bound to be the primary communicators, 'Eve' and 'Oscar' are bound to be evil evesdroppers, so 'Alice' isn't truly interchangable with 'Eve'. That means: It's a very good idea to make another article for Alice and Bob, – they're more like variables that can be interchanged for true individuals, not metasyntactical variables. Rursus 16:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alice and Bob; merge or make new category? 

message: I noticed that all of the Metasyntactic numbers had some sort of description of origin, except for 23. Isn't 23 just used because it is the common TCP port number for the Telnet service? (See: List of well-known ports (computing)) --Tinctorius 15:04, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It could come from Discordianism. --Maru  (talk) Contribs 16:12, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That may even make more sense, since 23 is a magical number in that perspective, like 42 is a somehow 'magical' number in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. --Tinctorius 20:24, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of number 23 

message: Saying that "foo" is canonical is misleading in my opinion. It seems to indicate that it has been formally standardized in some way.
:How about "Traditional"? --maru   (talk)  contribs 19:21, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about noting that the sense in which the word is intended can be determined by reading the linked definition? 202.27.216.35 10:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canonical 

message: Where are the examples of usage of metasyntactic variables?  This article seems more of a list of commonly used metasyntactic variable names.  Can't we actually have something using foo, bar and baz in context, rather than long-winded explanations of the etymology of all these names?  Surely, for a good portion of the programming/hacker related ones at least, we can simply link to somewhere useful like the jargon file, or some other list?
I would like to see an example like (but simpler than) this:
:"Consider a class hierarchy, where class foo is the child of class bar, and a function, f, has type
:baz f (bar x)
:Polymophism allows that if y is of type foo, then f(y) is type-correct."
Yes.  A little long-winded, maybe needs to be more "meta".  But something like that. Tez 09:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples?? 

message: There is a mention of Podunk University in the metasyntactic places list. I hear much more reference of podunk to describe a small town, similar to the usage of West Bumfuck. There's also a bit of history having to do with Ulysses, New York horsedreamer 21:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Podunk 

message: Surely asdf has earned its place as a metasyntactic variable?
:Definitely. And it has many other uses as well. You might also want to see the article asdf.  00:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  asdf 

message: I've added an IPA pronunciation key, could someone who actually knows what they're doing check if it's correct? :-) -Shai-kun 07:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA pronunciation 

message: The name I always heard growing up was Mr/Mrs McGillicutty.  Have others heard that used?
What about more common things like "such and such", "so and so", "thus and such", "this and that", etc.?  Even though these are composed of regular English words, can't they be considered metasyntactic variables if they're used as such?4.252.7.249 06:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other metasyntactic variables... 

message: Caution, fellows. In contrast to Muchosransk, Bobruisk is actually an existing town in Belarus. It was popularized by a russian internet meme, but it's not fictional. And AFAIK it's not used to refer some generic town. --88.68.51.208 01:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bobruisk 

message: Why is there no mention of foo, bar, baz, garply? In the haste to catalog all the "others"... did someone manage to delete the canonical first four? --Concerned Citizen —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.12.157.118 (talk) 23:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "big four"... 

message: The quux section is gibberish.  I can't even understand it, so I cannnot fix it.Thaddeus Slamp 19:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  quux 

message: After reading the sentence "The number 23 is also commonly used as an integer example—particularly when the connotations associated with 42 are undesirable." I discovered that not only this sentence, but most of the article cannot be verified by references. – Ilse@ 13:06, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article needs additional references 

message: A metasyntactic variable is a placeholder name, or an alias term, commonly used to denote the subject matter under discussion, or a random member of a class of things under discussion. The term originates from computer programming and other technical contexts, and is commonly used in examples by hackers and programmers. The use of a metasyntactic variable is helpful in freeing a programmer from creating a logically named variable, although the invented term may also become sufficiently popular and enter the language as a neologism. The word foo is the canonical example.
A metasyntactic variable (IPA pronunciation: [ˈmɛ.tə.sɪn.ˌtæk.tɪk ˈvɛ.ɹi.ə.bl]) is a placeholder name used in syntax or algorithm specifications to show the places where content can vary.
The same concept is employed in other fields where it is expressed by terms such as schematic variable (see logical form).
However, it has been plausibly suggested that the real reason for the term metasyntactic variable is that it sounds cool: the term is an example of computer jargon.
Shouldn't that be merged? 142.165.9.93 05:33, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Header Merger