[Tutor] What is "foo"?

[Danny Yoo]

> > Foo: What's it good for?
>
> Foo and Bar are popular names used in examples. They don't mean
> anything. For example to show how to define a function I might write
>
> def foo():
>    print 'Hello'
>
> I just use foo to avoid having to think of a meaningful name.


Hi Joseph,

I sometimes get lazy and use 'foo' in my own code examples too.  But I
find that it's usually a lax idea, precisely because it has no meaning.

Because that "foo" nonsense word confuses beginners quite a bit, I'm
trying to be more conscious to make good variable names, even for
throwaway code, although I sometimes slip.

There's a nice article in the wikipedia that explains Foo:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo