What are FOO and FOOBARR??
Larry Cunningham
of knowledge I know, Foo is short for foof, which is short for foofaroo.
And foofaroo is anything which is superfulous (SP, -2!), redundant, not
functional, etc. 8^)
Actually, Foo is probably different from Foof.. I think it is a programmers
term. But from the widespread use of Foo as a dummy filename for example
problems, I suspect there is a REAL story behind it.
As for FooBar, well, it is FUBAR which stands for Fouled Up Beyond All
Recognition, or something like that. Perhaps a slightly different phrase
depending on the company present. It is a military term. General Schwarzkov
probably uses the term still.
"Yeh, Buddy.. | lcun...@nmsu.edu (Larry Cunningham) | _~~_
I've got your COMPUTER! | % Physical Science Laboratory | (O)(-)
Right HERE!!" | New Mexico State University | /..\
(computer THIS!) | Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA 88003 | <>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are CORRECT, mine, and not PSLs or NMSUs..
J. Horsmeier
[stuff 'bout `foo' deleted ...]
>As for FooBar, well, it is FUBAR which stands for Fouled Up Beyond All
>Recognition, or something like that. Perhaps a slightly different phrase
>depending on the company present. It is a military term. General Schwarzkov
>probably uses the term still.
>
I thought it was: foobar = fubar = Fucked Up Beyond All Repair ...
Jos
|_Jos_Horsmeie...@and.nl_| J.F. Kennedy `Ich bin ein Berliner' |
| O O \O/ O O \O | R. Nixon `I am not a crook' |
|<|> <|/ | <|> \|> |> everybody | R. Reagan `I uhhh ...' |
|/ \ / / \ / \ \ / \ twist! | G. Bush `I don't like broccoli' |
| Zappa for president of the USA | F. Zappa `I am a Hamburger' |
Rev. Ben A. Mesander
>Please pardon my ignorance, but I can't find any FAQ list and I have got
>to find out...
> What does FOO and FOOBAR mean? Where did they come from?
>
>
>Thanks in advance. If you are going to flame my ignorance, please answer
>to <r...@bert.cs.byu.edu> or <snyd...@coned1.byu.edu>.
Not at all!
I think Eric S. Raymond would be glad to post the entire jargon file,
in order to explain this. He recently won the Long Post event in the
USENET olympics!
--
| b...@epmooch.UUCP (Ben Mesander) | "Elvis, you take so many pills, |
| ben%serval...@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu | how can you feel anything?" |
| ...!chinet!servalan!epmooch!ben | --Priscilla Presley |
Gary Tse
|term. But from the widespread use of Foo as a dummy filename for example
|problems, I suspect there is a REAL story behind it.
|
|As for FooBar, well, it is FUBAR which stands for Fouled Up Beyond All
|Recognition, or something like that. Perhaps a slightly different phrase
|depending on the company present. It is a military term. General Schwarzkov
|probably uses the term still.
\begin{mild-flame}
RTFM? Oh nevermind. I will quote it for you.
From "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" in news.announce.newusers,
we are told that:
# 2. What is the derivation of "foo" as a filler word?
#
# The favorite story is that it comes from "fubar" which is an
# acronym for "fouled up beyond all recognition", which is supposed
# to be a military term. (Various forms of this exist, "fouled"
# usually being replaced by a stronger word.) "Foo" and "Bar" have
# the same derivation.
The lesson? Read news.announce.newusers like all good little newusers
should.
\end{mild-flame}
--
Gary Tse t...@pa.dec.com || t...@soda.berkeley.edu (415) 617-3106
Rick Colombo - Fermilab
> # The favorite story is that it comes from "fubar" which is an
> # acronym for "fouled up beyond all recognition", which is supposed
> # to be a military term. (Various forms of this exist, "fouled"
> # usually being replaced by a stronger word.) "Foo" and "Bar" have
> # the same derivation.
>
The first time I heard the above definition was after learning about the
FUBAR register in the VAX which is the Failed UniBus Address Register.
I don't know which came first though.
*******************************************************
* from the e-net desk of: Rick Colombo *
* Fermilab col...@fnal.fnal.gov *
* P.O. Box 500 708-840-8225 *
* Batavia, Ill. USA 60510 (no Flamn' flames :-) *
*******************************************************
Speaker for the Dead
>Please pardon my ignorance, but I can't find any FAQ list and I have got
>to find out...
> What does FOO and FOOBAR mean? Where did they come from?
>
Foo story:
Some folks from the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism; check out
rec.org.sca for more info) have been working on a project to computerize
the research work we do in heraldry-- you know, coats of arms, that kind
of stuff. Well, heraldry has a very specific language for describing
things that appear in devices... a vertical stripe is calles a pale,
a horizontal one is a fess, and a thinner horizontal one is a bar...
oops. So you have all these computer people trying to talk about parsing
these heraldic descriptions ("blazons"), and they were talking about
generic blazons like "A foo between two bars", and all the heraldic
people were saying that, well, if $foo = Star of David above, you're
talking about the Israeli flag. We ultimately adopted baz as the
second generic metavariable (I like that phrase); things worked much better
than...
--Michael Kleber "I don't have an overactive imagination...
kle...@husc.harvard.edu I have an underactive reality..." --EG
Larry Cunningham
a military term, like SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up) and FUBB
(Fouled Up Beyond Belief).
As for FOO, there is an old joke about a FOO bird, which may have something
to do with its origin. (Funny, though, the ONO bird didn't make it into
computer folklore..)
Oh well, folks. Who =really= knows? Or cares?
Paul Wexelblat
(Larry Cunningham) writes:
> Oh well, folks. Who =really= knows? Or cares?
I =really= know!
[but I =do= wonder if anyone really cares]
================================================================
Have you ever heard of FOO space?
...Wex
Phydeaux
>I =really= know!
>[but I =do= wonder if anyone really cares]
Sheesh... Fouled (F***ked) Up Beyond All Recognition ...
Pronounced "FOO-BAR" ... Take that apart and <gasp> you get FOO and
BAR.
Now do you understand?
reb
--
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ICBM: 41.55N 87.40W h:558 West Wellington #3R Chicago, IL 60657 312-549-8365
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Don't tax tape! ... Write your congresscritter...
Tom Sarver
>According to "Dirt Bike" magazine, Super Hunky, the most reputable source
>of knowledge I know, Foo is short for foof, which is short for foofaroo.
>And foofaroo is anything which is superfulous (SP, -2!), redundant, not
>functional, etc. 8^)
>Actually, Foo is probably different from Foof.. I think it is a programmers
>term. But from the widespread use of Foo as a dummy filename for example
>problems, I suspect there is a REAL story behind it.
>As for FooBar, well, it is FUBAR which stands for Fouled Up Beyond All
>Recognition, or something like that. Perhaps a slightly different phrase
>depending on the company present. It is a military term. General Schwarzkov
>probably uses the term still.
WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
'Adventure.' This game started such phrases as 'Magic Cookie' as well.
Ask an MIT grad who's about 50 right now. You'll see that a lot of Unix
slang originated with this game also.
However, if you look the _New_Hacker's_Dictionary_ you will see many sources,
none of which are authoritative. The best known document which makes full
use of the word is Kernighan and Ritchie's _The_C_Programming_Language_.
Any MIT'ers out there know about the 'Adventure' game?
--
--Tom Sarver
tsa...@andersen.com, Chicago, IL
The opinions presented here are not necessarily those of my employer.
Kevin D. Quitt
>la...@rock.psl.nmsu (Larry Cunningham) writes:
>>As for FooBar, well, it is FUBAR which stands for Fouled Up Beyond All
>>Recognition, or something like that. Perhaps a slightly different phrase
>>depending on the company present. It is a military term. General Schwarzkov
>>probably uses the term still.
>
>WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
>Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
>'Adventure.'
I think you've got the cart before the horse. Adventure's not *that*
old, and foo was already in use.
--
_
Kevin D. Quitt srhqla!venus!kdq kdq%ve...@sr.com
3D systems, inc. 26081 Avenue Hall Valencia, CA 91355
VOICE (805) 295-5600 x430 FAX (805) 257-1200
96.37% of all statistics are made up.
R. Kym Horsell
>Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
>'Adventure.' This game started such phrases as 'Magic Cookie' as well.
>Ask an MIT grad who's about 50 right now. You'll see that a lot of Unix
>slang originated with this game also.
I sotra remember xyzzy and plugh, but not foo from c. 1970 adventure.
BTW, during the 30's and 40's `foo' was a character you used to
see everywhere scrawled on walls -- ``foo was here'' usually
at the bottom.
I presume foo-bar is simply a logician or computer engineer's notation of
``non-fooness''. :-)
-kym
Ron Dippold
>WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
>Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
>'Adventure.' This game started such phrases as 'Magic Cookie' as well.
>Ask an MIT grad who's about 50 right now. You'll see that a lot of Unix
>slang originated with this game also.
And why not? FUBAR has been around longer than "real" computers
(1940s) have. I see no problem with speculating that this was where
the original Foo and Bar came from on Adventure and other computer stuff.
Later on, of course, with all these "threads" back to the origin, it
can get confusing as to which came first.
--
Standard disclaimer applies, you legalistic hacks. | Ron Dippold
Jeff Edelen
>In article <.683574983@andersen> tsa...@andersen.uucp (Tom Sarver) writes:
>>WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
>>Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
>>'Adventure.' This game started such phrases as 'Magic Cookie' as well.
>>Ask an MIT grad who's about 50 right now. You'll see that a lot of Unix
>>slang originated with this game also.
>
>I sotra remember xyzzy and plugh, but not foo from c. 1970 adventure.
>
Speaking of Adventure, I seem to recall having source code for it. It's
been a few years, so I may be mistaken entirely here, but the source code
I'm thinking of was in FORTRAN and looked a lot like Adventure to me.
Does anybody know some details?
Of course, as far as 'ancient' games go, I thought Adventure was pretty
weak compared to Dungeons. (Or is it 'Adventures' and 'Dungeon'? My
memory is pretty cloudy here. Of course, I only called them up as
'ADVENT' and 'DUNGEO', so that's probably somewhat understandable.)
-Jeff
R. Kym Horsell
> Speaking of Adventure, I seem to recall having source code for it. It's
>been a few years, so I may be mistaken entirely here, but the source code
>I'm thinking of was in FORTRAN and looked a lot like Adventure to me.
>Does anybody know some details?
>
> Of course, as far as 'ancient' games go, I thought Adventure was pretty
>weak compared to Dungeons. (Or is it 'Adventures' and 'Dungeon'? My
>memory is pretty cloudy here. Of course, I only called them up as
>'ADVENT' and 'DUNGEO', so that's probably somewhat understandable.)
The FORTRAN version I'm familiar with was written by some DEC engineer
for a DECsystem-10. It came on a DEC-tape and was the first copy
into Australia.
It was a hand-translation of either the original or small version number
written in MUPS (or some-such G*d-forsaken language popular at MIT
or somewhere at the time).
The neat part about it was the huge database that you had to bootstrap
into the core-image and subsequently save as the working game.
It was hard to resist looking at that database; but it turned out
making a map was much easier.
I first saw Dungeon c. 1980's -- probably long after its origin --
on a VAX-11/780. I think it came ``free''. As the intro said
``experienced Adventurers have run screaming from Dungeon''
or words to that effect.
Whereas a couple of us had made the perfect
score with Adventure; the utterly alien concept of objects THAT HAD
NO USE WHATEVER (as in Dungeon) confouned us. ;-) Shortly after
that we all matured and didn't play computer games anymore. (much).
-kym
Rich Alderson
>>
>> # The favorite story is that it comes from "fubar" which is an
>> # acronym for "fouled up beyond all recognition", which is supposed
>> # to be a military term. (Various forms of this exist, "fouled"
>> # usually being replaced by a stronger word.) "Foo" and "Bar" have
>> # the same derivation.
>>
>
>The first time I heard the above definition was after learning about the
>FUBAR register in the VAX which is the Failed UniBus Address Register.
>I don't know which came first though.
The military acronym is from the US Army in World War II. (For US forces, this
would be 1941-1945.) The VAX, although it seems like an old architecture, is
a good bit later... :->
Rich Alderson
>WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
>Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
>'Adventure.' This game started such phrases as 'Magic Cookie' as well.
>Ask an MIT grad who's about 50 right now. You'll see that a lot of Unix
>slang originated with this game also.
BZZZT! Wrong answer.
The MIT use of FOO and BAR as meta-variables in computer science discussions is
unrelated to the use of (misspelled) FOO in the Adventure game, which by the
bye is NOT from MIT, but from Stanford--at least, the oldest version most
people know about.
The word FOO (as in "Foo! You are nothing but a charlatan!") is the same as
"Phoo!" which is in turned shortened from "Phooey!" or "Pfui!" It is partially
onomatopoeic, partially euphemistic. It is used to stand for "Fuck!" in the
same way that "Darn!" stands for "Damn!" or "Heck!" stands for "Hell!"
Given this use of FOO/PHOO, it is easy to see how FUBAR came to be reanalyzed
as FOO+BAR, giving rise to the use of BAR separately from FOO.
>However, if you look the _New_Hacker's_Dictionary_ you will see many sources,
>none of which are authoritative. The best known document which makes full
>use of the word is Kernighan and Ritchie's _The_C_Programming_Language_.
Given Dennis Ritchie's MIT connections, this is hardly surprising. Was
Kernighan also from MIT?
>Any MIT'ers out there know about the 'Adventure' game?
Of course there are. It inspired some MIT hackers to create Zork (aka
MadAdventure). They even said so.
It also inspired a programmer at the University of Chicago Graduate School of
Business named David Long to expand the Crowther and Woods version, adding
dozens of rooms, changing or adding several puzzles, and pushing the point
count from 350 to 500 (later 501).
I'm not sure, but I think Willy Crowther was at CDC. I know that Don Woods was
at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Rich Alderson
> Speaking of Adventure, I seem to recall having source code for it. It's
>been a few years, so I may be mistaken entirely here, but the source code
>I'm thinking of was in FORTRAN and looked a lot like Adventure to me.
>Does anybody know some details?
>
> Of course, as far as 'ancient' games go, I thought Adventure was pretty
>weak compared to Dungeons. (Or is it 'Adventures' and 'Dungeon'? My
>memory is pretty cloudy here. Of course, I only called them up as
>'ADVENT' and 'DUNGEO', so that's probably somewhat understandable.)
Yes, Adventure was written in FORTRAN. It's amazing what can be done with the
wrong tools when they are all you have! :-)
BTW, it's "Adventure" and "Dungeon"--both singular.
Rich Alderson
>The FORTRAN version I'm familiar with was written by some DEC engineer for a
>DECsystem-10. It came on a DEC-tape and was the first copy into Australia.
I've always why the engineer, who was anonymous, had that much idle time. :-)
>It was a hand-translation of either the original or small version number
>written in MUPS (or some-such G*d-forsaken language popular at MIT or
>somewhere at the time).
Muddle, aka MDL (Modeling Dynamics Language). An MIT invention.
>The neat part about it was the huge database that you had to bootstrap into
>the core-image and subsequently save as the working game. It was hard to
>resist looking at that database; but it turned out making a map was much
>easier.
>
>I first saw Dungeon c. 1980's -- probably long after its origin -- on a
>VAX-11/780. I think it came ``free''. As the intro said ``experienced
>Adventurers have run screaming from Dungeon'' or words to that effect.
>
>Whereas a couple of us had made the perfect score with Adventure; the utterly
>alien concept of objects THAT HAD NO USE WHATEVER (as in Dungeon) confouned
>us. ;-) Shortly after that we all matured and didn't play computer games
>anymore. (much).
How sad. :-)
I still fired up Zork (the original MDL version) on my DEC-20 occasionally
until the day I shut it down.
I will admit that I only used about 3 moves (on average) each time...
Alan J Rosenthal
>The word FOO (as in "Foo! You are nothing but a charlatan!") is the same as
>"Phoo!" which is in turned shortened from "Phooey!" or "Pfui!" It is partially
Don't forget Fee Fie Foe Foo, too.
Have you actually heard a word "Phoo" ever? (sceptical)
>to expand the Crowther and Woods version, adding dozens of rooms, changing or
>adding several puzzles, and pushing the point count from 350 to 500 (later
>501).
hmm.. it's 550 in the versions I've seen & heard of.. don't know who did it..
Christopher Samuel
fl...@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) doodled:
> Have you actually heard a word "Phoo" ever? (sceptical)
Yes, many times...
- Chris
--
Christopher Samuel| RFC: cc...@aber.ac.uk ALTERNATE: csa...@nyx.cs.du.edu
c/o Physics Dept.,| JNT: cc...@uk.ac.aber UUCP: *!mcsun!ukc!aber!ccs7
UCW Aberystwyth, +----------------------------------------------------------
Aberystwyth, WALES| Disclaimer: I mean nothing I say, and say nothing I mean.
Howard Shubs
>In article <.683574983@andersen> tsa...@andersen.uucp (Tom Sarver) writes:
>>la...@rock.psl.nmsu (Larry Cunningham) writes:
>>>As for FooBar, well, it is FUBAR which stands for Fouled Up Beyond All
>>>Recognition, or something like that. Perhaps a slightly different phrase
>>>depending on the company present. It is a military term. General Schwarzkov
>>>probably uses the term still.
>>
>>WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
>>Foo does *not* derive from FUBAR. Foo was a magic word in the ancient game
>>'Adventure.'
>
> I think you've got the cart before the horse. Adventure's not *that*
>old, and foo was already in use.
My understanding is that FUBAR dates from WWII, as does SNAFU. I'm
more likely to believe that FOO is short for FUBAR than I am that it
started in ADVENTURE, since ADVENTURE only dates from 1972 or so and
--
Howard S Shubs hsh...@eff.org The Denim Adept
System Analysis Corporation hshubs@BYTECOSY
Nolan Hinshaw
At home at the bottom of a large heap of memorabilia is a green
printout binder containing a compiler listing of the VAX/VMS
Fortran version of ADVENT which I ran off at the DECUS symposium
in San Diego in the winter of 1977. Now and then I dust off the
binder and reminisce (ACHOO!). I got a listing of the text data-
base file, too!
--
Nolan Hinshaw Internet: no...@twg.com
The Wollongong Group Dingalingnet: (415)962-7197
Piobairi Uillean, San Francisco
Is mise mo drumadoir eile fein!
Kevin D. Quitt
OK, who's got more?
SNAFU situation normal, all fucked up
FUBB fucked up beyond all belief
FUBAR fucked up beyond all recognition
FUMTU fucked up more than usual
TARFU things are really fucked up
FIGMO fuck it, got my orders
JANFU joint army-navy fuckup. (When American troops get shelled
by their own side, in this case involving both the army and
the navy.)
GFU general fuck-up
SAMFU self-adjusting military fuck-up
SAPFU surpassing all previous fuck-ups
SUSFU situation unchanged, still fucked-up
BOHICA bend over, here it comes again
Vick De Giorgio
>
>
You might remember it as:
fee fie foe foo
;-) =V=
--
Vick De Giorgio - vic...@vicstoy.UUCP
UUCP - uunet!tarpit!bilver!vicstoy!vickde
- vicstoy Public Access Unix, Orlando FL
- (407)299-3661 1200/2400 24 hours 8N1
Rich Alderson
> OK, who's got more?
>
Or "relief" or "redemption" or "repair."
One with which I have always taken exception is
FUBIST fuck you, buddy, I'm a short-timer
which I claim should be "fybist." It was apparently a Nam response when
someone with little time left in-country was told to go on patrol.
--
Rich Alderson 'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take
Unix Systems such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
L&IR, Stanford --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@alderson.stanford.edu _The Lost Road_
Conrad Longmore
>
>old, and foo was already in use.
>
Nod. Foo and Bar *do* come from Fubar, which is a military term from the
second world war. There are three related acronyms:
FUBAR Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition
SNAFU Situation Normal All Fouled Up
TARFU Things Are *Really* Fouled Up
--
// Conrad Longmore / Email: conrad @ tharr.uucp // == There are == //
// Bedford College / Janet: tharr!conrad @ uk.ac.ukc // == more than == //
//-----------------/ Uucp: ..!ukc!axion!tharr!conrad // == 12 states == //
// ** T H A R R ** /---------------------------------// == in Europe == //
// +44 234 841503 / Free access to Usenet in the UK // == --------- == //
John Hughes
One with which I have always taken exception is
FUBIST fuck you, buddy, I'm a short-timer
which I claim should be "fybist." It was apparently a Nam response when
someone with little time left in-country was told to go on patrol.
Non-military, but common around the University of Hull EE dept in 1981
was
NMFP (en em ef pee) Not MY fucking problem
the standard response to requests for enlightenment from people
working on different research projects. I personaly use this as a
response to stupid questions as an alternative to the usual RTFM (are
tee ef em - Read the fucking manual). But then I'm mean like that.
--
John Hughes,
11 rue Castex, F-75004 Paris, FRANCE.
bespoke fax publishing systems while-U-wait.
Magnus Olsson
> Speaking of Adventure, I seem to recall having source code for it. It's
>been a few years, so I may be mistaken entirely here, but the source code
>I'm thinking of was in FORTRAN and looked a lot like Adventure to me.
>Does anybody know some details?
Well, of course I don't know any details of _your_ sources :-) but
the original Adventure sources _are_ in Fortran (quite ugly Fortran
IV). There are several versions available on the net; I've downloaded
one with FTP from the Usenet archives at uunet.uu.net (I don't remember
if it was in comp.sources.misc or comp.sources.games, though). There's
also a version in C available from uunet; strictly speaking, this is
not the original game but a new one, written to be exactly like the old
one...
> Of course, as far as 'ancient' games go, I thought Adventure was pretty
>weak compared to Dungeons. (Or is it 'Adventures' and 'Dungeon'? My
>memory is pretty cloudy here. Of course, I only called them up as
>'ADVENT' and 'DUNGEO', so that's probably somewhat understandable.)
It's "Adventure" and "Dungeon" (the latter also known as "Zork"). It's
not very strange that Adventure seems a bit primitive compared to more
modern adventure games. What _is_ strange is that Dungeon still
compares very favourably to many newer games - the parser is quite
good, the vocabulary large, the cave huge, the text well written, the
problems extremely clever and the world well thought out - in terms of
"sense of wonder", I'd put it before all other text games I've ever
seen. (All this IMHO, of course).
[BTW, I just posted a Macintosh version of Dungeon to
Comp.binaries.mac. It's compiled from C sources I found on the net,
apparently a faithful translation of the original Fortran code. I
haven't made any changes at all to it - the only difference seems to
be that _any_ user can enter the GDT... According to the moderator, it
should appear during the next weekend.]
--
Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q
University of Lund, Sweden | >----<
Internet: mag...@thep.lu.se | / \===== g
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
Tom Knight
>It's "Adventure" and "Dungeon" (the latter also known as "Zork"). It's
Of course, it was really Zork, much later also known as Dungeon.
>not very strange that Adventure seems a bit primitive compared to more
>modern adventure games. What _is_ strange is that Dungeon still
>compares very favourably to many newer games - the parser is quite
>good, the vocabulary large, the cave huge, the text well written, the
>problems extremely clever and the world well thought out - in terms of
>"sense of wonder", I'd put it before all other text games I've ever
>seen. (All this IMHO, of course).
>
>[BTW, I just posted a Macintosh version of Dungeon to
>Comp.binaries.mac. It's compiled from C sources I found on the net,
>apparently a faithful translation of the original Fortran code. I
Of course, the "original" fortran code is a poor translation of the
really original MDL aka Muddle code.
>haven't made any changes at all to it - the only difference seems to
>be that _any_ user can enter the GDT... According to the moderator, it
>should appear during the next weekend.]
>
Zork was written for the the ITS operating system at MIT Project MAC,
running on a Digital KA-10 processor in about 1973. It was written in
an experimental Lisp-like language called MDL (really Muddle, but
changed for political reasons). The writers subsequently founded
Infocom and wrote several later text based games (Leather Goddess of
Phobos, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.).
Dik T. Winter
> Of course, it was really Zork, much later also known as Dungeon.
>
> really original MDL aka Muddle code.
>
> running on a Digital KA-10 processor in about 1973. It was written in
> an experimental Lisp-like language called MDL (really Muddle, but
> changed for political reasons). The writers subsequently founded
> Infocom and wrote several later text based games (Leather Goddess of
> Phobos, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.).
For authorative information about Zork, see:
P. David Lebling, Marc S. Blank, Timothy A. Anderson, "Zork:
A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game", in IEEE Computer, April
1979, pp 51-59
--
dik t. winter, cwi, amsterdam, nederland
d...@cwi.nl
Tim Pierce
>
>>It's "Adventure" and "Dungeon" (the latter also known as "Zork"). It's
>
>Of course, it was really Zork, much later also known as Dungeon.
Which of course was inspired by Crowther and Woods.
--
____ Tim Pierce / "Are there many other lesbians
\ / pie...@husc.harvard.edu / at Amherst who are bisexual?"
\/ (aka twpi...@amh.amherst.edu) / -- name withheld