New Start

技术文档中经常出现foo bar命名的变量，一直想知道这两个词到底什么意思。今天看freebsd的文档，又看到这俩，忍不住好奇，搜索了一下。
在http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/F/foo.html找到了关于这两个词的解释，大概是说foo来自于华纳卡通公司的一部动画片。里面有一段居然跟汉语撤上关系:)

According to the Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion Holman claimed to have found the word “foo” on the bottom of a Chinese figurine. This is plausible; Chinese statuettes often have apotropaic inscriptions, and this one was almost certainly the Mandarin Chinese word fu (sometimes transliterated foo), which can mean “happiness” or “prosperity” when spoken with the rising tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called “fu dogs”). English speakers' reception of Holman's ‘foo’ nonsense word was undoubtedly influenced by Yiddish ‘feh’ and English ‘fooey’ and ‘fool’.