Talk:Metasyntactic variable

message: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/metasyntactic-variable.html
kf4yfd (talk) 20:42, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Jargon File Reference

message: RFC3092- "The etymology of foo" describes the use of a metasyntactic variable. 
Metasyntactic variables are used with variables, placeholder names are commonly only used to describe nouns.
Placeholder names are used in human communications in place of the correct word. A metasyntactic variable is "a variable of a variable", hence the meta. Somewhere along the line these 2 pages have crossed paths and intermingled and need to be re-separated. Merging these 2 pages would only add to what is already a mess. 
kf4yfd 13:47, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: RFC 3092 - Etymology of "Foo" --Jtir 23:26, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Placeholder names are NOT metasyntactic variables

message: I've removed a large chunk of the examples, as the article was mostly an example farm. Please use some judgment in building the article back up so that it doesn't turn into an unwieldy mess again. - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 19:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Metasyntactic_variable/Archive_1  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kf4yfd (talk • contribs) 16:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I'll leave it to you to complete the archiving by removing whatever comments you have copied to Talk:Metasyntactic_variable/Archive_1. --Jtir (talk) 22:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, got sidetracked with dinner plans ... work in progress kf4yfd (talk) 22:38, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussion Archives 

message: Is f1 in the Kernighan example a metasyntactic variable or a placeholder name? --Jtir (talk) 14:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And what is the status of "SPAM = 1" in the Python example? --Jtir (talk) 16:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is ''f1'' in the Kernighan example? 

message: Why does the word 'wibble' redirect here? I can't find any mention of it in the article. 86.0.108.178 (talk) 23:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-direct 

message: Is this the exact same thing as a metalinguistic variable ? Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 03:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  metalinguistic 

message: Is Suppliers and Parts database a meta-variable? TMC1221 (talk) 05:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is Suppliers & Parts an example? 

message: In my opinion, the word STRING in the Python example
is not a normal metasyntactic variable (it's not normal
Python either; someone should fix that tutorial).
The whole point with a metasyntactic variable name is to be
an obviously nonsense word, to tell the reader:
: If this wasn't a generic example, you would choose a context-specific word here. But the example is generic, so I have invented an absurd Alice-in-Wonderland context to make that clear.
This is why x, i, STRING and so on aren't metasyntactic variables.
They can be applied in any context.
If you copy an example which uses i as an array index, you will keep the i.
If you copy some code which uses foo, you are supposed to change foo to something suitable.
JöG (talk) 19:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with that. At first, the Python STRING example was confusing to me. Therefore, in my opinion the example is not very helpful and makes it more difficult to understand metasyntactic variables. I think we should remove the example from the article. Ladylab (talk) 02:16, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The ''STRING'' example 

message: R language definition, http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-lang.pdf uses these in section 4.3.2 (illustrating partial matching of named arguments in function calls) 193.40.5.245 (talk) 18:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  fumble and fooey 

message: xyzzy and plugh are references to Colossal Cave Adventure. I don't have a link but I think that bar, blee and baz may be in the Zork text adventure games. However, I am not sure of the direction of reference. If they are in Zork, it may be a reference to metasyntactics in other programs. --SaintD1970 (talk) 22:52, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Computer gaming  sources of placeholders 

message: Most of the time, the term "metasyntactic variable" is used as just a fancy-sounding way of saying "placeholder" or "arbitrary variable". Usually there is nothing metasyntactic going on.
For instance, when a Python tutorial says that you can append one list onto another by writing spam.append(eggs), neither "spam" nor "eggs" is being used metasyntactically. They are being used as the names of ordinary Python variables. These names are placeholders, because in real code you would use variable names that were meaningful in the application domain. The names "spam" and "eggs" are arbitrary but there is no meta-syntax here.
In contrast, here is a metasyntactic statement:  "If spam and eggs are both valid Python expressions, then (spam, eggs) is a valid expression."  This does not mean that the literal string "spam" is valid Python. Rather, it means that if you have two valid expressions -- such as 1 + 1 and "goat" -- then you can make a tuple of them: (1 + 1, "goat").  In this case, "spam" is not a variable of Python; rather, it stands for a piece of Python code.
But saying that "foo" or "spam" is a metasyntactic variable is just hogwash. "Foo" or "spam" are just placeholder names, which are sometimes used metasyntactically and sometimes not.  --71.146.7.39 (talk) 10:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mostly just a placeholder 

message: those placeholders may have been used in the tutorial, but the author was obviously a Monty Python fan. i've spent many hours in #python and my experience is that foo/bar/baz are primarily used (i've never seen SPAM).   not that i don't like to see Python referenced wherever possible... but i think using the word "principal" there may be a bit ambiguous.  what are some synonyms for "official"? Inhahe (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Never seen spam? spam is widely used. A search of the 2.6.4 docos at http://docs.python.org/search.html?q=spam has 35 hits. Foo and bar are also there, but mainly as plain text or file/module names. peterl (talk) 03:49, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Any history of why "ham" is common rather than "bacon"? Not R (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

text: Hmmm, is there any actual reference for this?  The cited doc doesn't use the word "metasyntactic" and I didn't find any obvious synonyms like "dummy variable" or "placeholder variable."  In the current level I find 4 occurrences of spam, ham, and eggs together, 3 of spam, eggs, and bacon, and 2 of spam, ham, and bacon.  In the oldest version still there, 2.7, the combinations with "ham" have only one occurrence each, so spam, eggs, and bacon was the most common (as I expected). Not R (talk) 17:43, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  SPAM in Python? 

message: Hi. The pages Ned Baker redirects here. But the phrase does not appear on this page. Should "Ned Baker" appear on this page? or should the page Ned Baker be deleted? ComputScientist (talk) 16:21, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirections 

message: Foo and bar as used in the programming language examples are not metasyntactic variables, but simply customary names for variables used in programming examples just as x is commonly used as a variable name in math, e.g. when one writes f(x) = x2. There's nothing meta-syntactic there. The RFCs cited in RFC 3092 actually do use FOO as a metasyntactic variable, e.g. RFC 772 contains "For example, if MRSQ R was in effect and some MRCPs had been given, and a MAIL FROM:<X@Y> TO:<FOO><CRLF> was done, there would be no way to distinguish a failure reply for mailbox "FOO" from a global failure for all recipients specified."  Tijfo098 (talk) 02:39, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serious confusions 

message: Since the edit summary got chopped in the last move, here's what I was thinking: I was planning to put a dab at Metasyntactic variable to prevent people from adding stuff unrelated to computing to this article (like placeholder names for people which it seems to have in the last section for some foreign languages) and rename the present article to Metasyntactic variable (computing). However, the dab would be just a two-line summary of this article, so it's probably not kosher. If we were to follow the DAB rules strictly, only the bastardized/reified meaning of "metasyntactic variable" as meaningless-word-usually-foo-used-in-any-context-but-typically-as-identifier would need a separate page, but that would be too confusing for the average computer (as opposed to logic) geek. So this page should remain a WP:CONCEPTDAB of sorts, now that I've clarified the lead. Tijfo098 (talk) 06:56, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title and scope 

message: The Talmud reference is exactly the same (from a metavar perspective) as Alice and Bob.  Therefore, either both should be in the commonly used section (I would argue that these days Alice and Bob are more commonly/widely used than the Talmud) or both in See Also.  Glennglazer (talk) 14:15, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  People as Metasyntactic Variables 

message: MIT & Stanford. Why an unusual string is useful. Epistemology. ~~ Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 02:40, 6 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metasyntactic Variables for Teaching

message: The list of words from other languages looks like a big mess. Most do not cite any references. Furthermore, it seems that most are unrelated to the subject of this article, and refer to words used in general as placeholder names.--128.183.2.230 (talk) 19:01, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Propose a prune, if no one objects. --Cornellier (talk) 19:55, 26 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  other languages 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: I think it's also worth adding that myFunction and myClass or myObject are used as meta syntaxes in function names and class names or object names too. myVar is also widely used. 
DavidNyan22467 (talk) 07:05, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metasyntactic functions