metasyntactic variable
Transcription
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- US Pronunciation
- US IPA
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- US Pronunciation
- US IPA
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Definition of metasyntactic variable words
- noun Technical meaning of metasyntactic variable (grammar) Strictly, a variable used in metasyntax, but often used for any name used in examples and understood to stand for whatever thing is under discussion, or any random member of a class of things under discussion. The word foo is the canonical example. To avoid confusion, hackers never (well, hardly ever) use "foo" or other words like it as permanent names for anything. In filenames, a common convention is that any filename beginning with a metasyntactic-variable name is a scratch file that may be deleted at any time. To some extent, the list of one's preferred metasyntactic variables is a cultural signature. They occur both in series (used for related groups of variables or objects) and as singletons. Here are a few common signatures: bazola, ztesch: Stanford (from mid-'70s on). zxc, spqr, wombat: Cambridge University (England). shme: Berkeley, GeoWorks, Ingres. Pronounced /shme/ with a short /e/. blarg, wibble: New Zealand Of all these, only "foo" and "bar" are universal (and baz nearly so). The compounds foobar and "foobaz" also enjoy very wide currency. Some jargon terms are also used as metasyntactic names; barf and mumble, for example. See also Commonwealth Hackish for discussion of numerous metasyntactic variables found in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. 1
Information block about the term
Parts of speech for Metasyntactic variable
noun
adjective
verb
adverb
pronoun
preposition
conjunction
determiner
exclamation
See also
Matching words
- Words starting with m
- Words starting with me
- Words starting with met
- Words starting with meta
- Words starting with metas
- Words starting with metasy
- Words starting with metasyn
- Words starting with metasynt
- Words starting with metasynta
- Words starting with metasyntac
- Words starting with metasyntact
- Words starting with metasyntacti
- Words starting with metasyntactic
- Words starting with metasyntacticv
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