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Topic: Foobar2000 name origin theory's (Read 11161 times) previous topic - next topic
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Foobar2000 name origin theory's

I happened to learn of the old saying "Fubar" today, which means "F*cked Up Beyond All Repair", which apparently derived from WWII.  To my surprise, when I looked up some info on Fubar, it says that it eventually got turned from "Fubar" to "Foobar".  But then as I read some more I began to learn that "Foobar" is used by coders, but I am kinda confused as to what it is used for and how that all got started since they don't use it as meaning "Fubar".

My question is, Peter, which one of these did you take the name from?  Also, why add 2000/2k to the name?

p.s. if you have some extra time, could you explain how the word Foobar is used in the coding world and for what?

Here's two links I read that explained the words Fubar and Foobar...

http://www.hack.gr/jargon/html/F/foobar.html
http://lists.free.net.ph/pipermail/oss-dev...uly/000175.html

Foobar2000 name origin theory's

Reply #1 –
oh!cool question!
attention:)

Foobar2000 name origin theory's

Reply #3 –
Oh, how many threads we have about this one too 
IIRC "foo" and "bar" are some sort of variables used in coding.. Not sure though

A second thread about this. There are more, I believe, but this was the first one I found.. It's not a long thread, but there's some information/theories/something about this.

Foobar2000 name origin theory's

Reply #4 –
"Foobar" probably took hold for the same reason "OK" did.
Quote
During the 1830s there was a humoristic fashion in Boston newspapers to reduce a phrase to initials and supply an explanation in parentheses. Sometimes the abbreviations were misspelled to add to the humor. OK was used in March 1839 as an abbreviation for all correct, the joke being that neither the O nor the K was correct."


So, "foobar" is the FUBARD form of FUBAR.

Foo, bar, and foobar are often used as generic variables by programmers, especially by people in near-association with free/open source.  GNU and BSD man/info pages are rife with "command --option foo" examples.

It has no meaning, which is kind of the point.  See Mu.

Foobar2000 name origin theory's

Reply #5 –
Quote
Oh, how many threads we have about this one too 
A second thread about this.

Read that thread. C_G's got it more-or-less bang on, IMO. 2000 is an over-used suffix used to create a product name, and thus is often used like a cliche, in the sense of "Buy our new Vacuum2000! It really sucks!" and the like.

I really don't think Peter cares what the player's called, and thus opted for a name that's little more than gibberish. It would have been equally effective if he named it some random string of characters, perhaps re-randomizing that string every load-time. He knew that if he wrote it, we would come, drawn like moths to the flame. Who cares about a name? That which we call a rose would by any other name still smell as sweet.

Foobar2000 name origin theory's

Reply #6 –
"foobar2000" is indeed a piece of random gibberish I had to type into "project name" box when creating a new project in MSVC, on the day all this started. IIRC I spent about 5 minutes on thinking about it - I wanted to get things working ASAP rather than worry about the name.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Foobar2000 name origin theory's

Reply #7 –
At the rate you develop, five minutes is a lot. ;-)