Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun slang A serious mistake.
  • noun computing A metasyntactic variable name, a place holder for words; compare foo, bar.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Phonetic spelling of “FUBAR”, an acronym for “Fucked up beyond all recognition”, itself presumably from foo.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word foobar.

Examples

  • I thought this was pretty cool treguly@ns: ~$ host - t txt foobar. wp.dg.cx descriptive text "The term foobar is a common placeholder name, also referred to as metasyntactic variable, used in computer programming or computer-related documentation.

    .:Computer Defense:. 2009

  • The only thing I find that it lacks is being able to embed album art into the tag .... for which MP3Tag+Albumart downloader does a good job (both can be easily run from within foobar, which makes it a bit easier)

    Six Best MP3 Tagging Tools | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • RailsSpace. com/profile/foobar will look for an action called foobar, which isn't what we want at all.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows midpoint 2009

  • Which is playing on foobar, which is the greatest player program ever.

    all the small things. « Love | Peace | Ohana 2006

  • For example, to run a second queue called foobar, you might use:./bin/torque-process -- queue_name = foobar

    Softpedia - Windows - All 2010

  • For example, to run a second queue called foobar, you might use:./bin/torque-process -- queue_name = foobar

    Softpedia - Windows - All 2010

  • Otherwise, there would be no way to tell the difference between screen name foobar/password bazquux and screen name foobarb/password azquux, since both would have the same combination foobarbazquux.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows midpoint 2009

  • Note: The reason to avoid this template naming convention for publicly released Themes is to avoid surprising users that create a page with the "- foobar" slug and expect the default template.

    Codex - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • Note: The reason to avoid this template naming convention for publicly released Themes is to avoid surprising users that create a page with the "- foobar" slug and expect the default template.

    Codex - Recent changes [en] 2010

  • Note: The reason to avoid this template naming convention for publicly released Themes is to avoid surprising users that create a page with the "- foobar" slug and expect the default template.

    Codex - Recent changes [en] Frumph 2010

Comments

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  • See also fubar

    December 17, 2006

  • If "FUBAR"= "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition", what do the two O's stand for?

    signed, confuzzled and/or ignant

    October 5, 2007

  • kind of like fubar "fucked up beyond all recognition"

    June 7, 2009

  • FOOBAR is an alternative spelling of "FUBAR". While FUBAR has its origins in military contexts, FOOBAR seems to have grown primarily within the computer software world. Some early systems created error log files with the filename "foobar.txt" Also, note that "FOO" and "BAR" are often used as names for generic alternatives when discussing computer algorithms.

    June 9, 2009