jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (06/22/89)
Well, it feels like only a couple of weeks ago that I was complaining about multitudes of responses being posted on the net when they should have been sent in E-mail. Then, alongs come someone who asks what "grep" stands for, and suddenly everybody's an expert who has to post his expert knowledge to the net instead of sending the questioner the answer in E-mail (yes, I know that some of you knew the "correct" answer, but that's not the point) for him to summarize. Now, we've got another intelligent request which shouldn't cause a flood of answers, but that flood has already started: In article <3345@uokmax.UUCP> jkmedcal@uokmax.UUCP (Jeff K Medcalf) writes: >Please mail me the meaning of foo and bar. They seem to be always used for >throw away files. What is the historical significance, if any, of such terms? I have seen at least three responses to this posted publicly to the net, and I'll wager there will be many more. I sent an answer to the poster of this message less than a day after he posted it, and I quoted directly from the MIT/Stanford hacker's dictionary, which gives the FUBAR and the Pogo etymology of the words foo and bar (but this is irrelevant). Are there so many people on the net who don't know the meaning of the word "mail"? For heaven's sake, even if someone who asks a question DOESN'T ask for answers to be mailed, you should mail them anyway, ESPECIALLY if you expect that the question is simple enough that a lot of people will know the answer! PLEASE, people, don't answer this question to the net. If you have an answer, send it in E-mail, and I am sure Mr. Medcalf will eventually post the responses he has received in one summary message. Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 432 S. Rose Blvd. jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Akron, OH 44320 Office: 617-253-4261 Home: 216-869-6432 "At X Window System speed it's merely annoying. At 1200 baud, it's grounds for cruel, horrible torture with a rusty butter knife."