Why Foo, Bar, and Grill?
The terms foobar, foo, and bar, are common placeholder names used in computer programming or computer-related documentation.They are commonly used to represent unknown values, typically when describing a scenario where the purpose of the unknown values is understood, but their precise values are arbitrary and unimportant. The terms can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea, including the data, variables, functions, and commands. The words themselves have no meaning in this usage, and are merely logical representations, much like the letters x and y are used in algebra. Foobar is often used alone; while foo and bar, are usually used in that order, when multiple entities are needed.
The origins of the terms are not known with certainty, and several anecdotal theories have been advanced to identify them. Foobar may derive from the military acronym FUBAR, or it may have gained popularity due to the fact that it is pronounced the same. In this meaning it also can derive from the German word furchtbar, which means awful and terrible and described the circumstances of the Second World War. American soldiers in Germany had problems with the pronunciation of the German word and used it in a simplified form.
FOO is an abbreviation of Forward Observation Officer, a British Army term in use as early as the First World War. The etymology of foo is explored in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments 3092, which notes usage of foo in 1930s cartoons including The Daffy Duck and comic strips, especially Smokey Stover and Pogo. From there the term migrated into military slang, where it merged with FUBAR.
The name Foo Bar and Grill has it's origins from Waterloo University. The CS club at Waterloo formerly had a sign on its door reading "Ye Olde Foo Bar and Grill"; this led to an attempt to establish "grill" as the third metasyntactic variable, but it never caught on.