[prog] questions, what is a turing machine

Jenn Vesperman jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au
Mon Dec 30 00:50:08 EST 2002


On Sun, 2002-12-29 at 20:16, Guru - wrote:
> "If people are wondering what a Turing machine is, they should ask"
> Ok, what is a Turing machine? I've heard of it before, does it relate to
> teaching how a processor functions?

Um. I know, but I'm not confident with the answer.
I'll let someone else look it up, while I explain the bit I do know -
metasyntactic variables. :)

> "If people prefer $foo, great, prefer $foo. ".
> I'm really confused on what you are talking about, BTW where is 'foo' and
> 'bar' used?? All GNU/Linux programmers seem to enjoy using the names...

foo, bar, baz and quux are what's called 'metasyntactic variables',
which is a fancy way of saying we use them to mean any random item.

They're essentially general pronouns, and mean 'thing'.

In this case, 'if people prefer any given language, great, prefer any
given language'.

Variations such as $foo and FOO mean the same thing. (Or rather, the
same non-thing).

Where do foo and bar come from? The military term 'fuba'. Fouled Up
Bloody Awful. Also spelled foobar or fubar. I don't know where baz or
quux come from.



Jenn V.
-- 
    "Do you ever wonder if there's a whole section of geek culture 
        	you miss out on by being a geek?" - Dancer.
 My book 'Essential CVS' will be published by O'Reilly in 2003.
jenn at anthill.echidna.id.au     http://anthill.echidna.id.au/~jenn/





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