![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
There are a number of standard sets of metasyntactic variables, but most of them (such as the "foo", "bar", "baz" sequence) are pretty short.
Thus, I propose adoption of a new set of variables in cases where a longer list is needed: The letters from Doctor Seuss's On Beyond Zebra: Yuzz, Wum, Um, Humpf, Fuddle, Glikk, Nuh, Snee, Quan, Thnad, Spazz, Floob, Zatz, Jogg, Flunn, Itch, Yekk, Vroo, and Hi. These are short, entertaining, pronouncable, and in general unlikely to get confused with any actual English words likely to be used in a program -- exactly the characteristics that one would desire in a metasyntactic variable.
Thus, I propose adoption of a new set of variables in cases where a longer list is needed: The letters from Doctor Seuss's On Beyond Zebra: Yuzz, Wum, Um, Humpf, Fuddle, Glikk, Nuh, Snee, Quan, Thnad, Spazz, Floob, Zatz, Jogg, Flunn, Itch, Yekk, Vroo, and Hi. These are short, entertaining, pronouncable, and in general unlikely to get confused with any actual English words likely to be used in a program -- exactly the characteristics that one would desire in a metasyntactic variable.