1. <hardware> {monitor}.

	2. <language> A vector of pointers to {activation records}.
	The Nth element points to the activation record containing
	variables declared at {lexical depth} N.  This allows faster
	access to variables from outer {scopes} than the alternative
	of linked activation records (but most variable accesses are
	either local or global or occasionally to the immediately
	enclosing scope).  Displays were used in some {ALGOL}
	implementations.

	(1996-02-22)

1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird.
	"The system's been behaving pretty randomly."

	2. Assorted; undistinguished.  "Who was at the conference?"
	"Just a bunch of random business types."

	3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected.  "He's
	just a random loser."

	4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organised.
	"The program has a random set of misfeatures."  "That's a
	random name for that function."  "Well, all the names were
	chosen pretty randomly."

	5. In no particular order, though {deterministic}.  "The I/O
	channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is
	chosen randomly."

	6. Arbitrary.  "It generates a random name for the scratch
	file."

	7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e. poorly done and for no good
	apparent reason.  For example, a program that handles file
	name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler
	routine that could easily have been coded using only three
	registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with
	non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it
	without first saving four extra registers.  What {randomness}!

	8.  A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students
	who soak up computer time and generally get in the way.

	9.  Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not
	known to the hacker speaking).  "I went to the talk, but the
	audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions".

	10.  (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall.  See
	also {J. Random}, {some random X}.

	[{Jargon File}]

	(1995-12-05)

[probably from "main store"] In some varieties of Commonwealth
	hackish, the preferred synonym for {core}.  Thus, "bringing a
	program into store" means not that one is returning
	shrink-wrapped software but that a program is being {swap}ped
	in.

	[{Jargon File}]

<jargon> /foo/ A sample name for absolutely anything,
	especially programs and files (especially {scratch files}).
	First on the standard list of {metasyntactic variables} used
	in {syntax} examples.  See also {bar}, {baz}, {qux}, {quux},
	{corge}, {grault}, {garply}, {waldo}, {fred}, {plugh},
	{xyzzy}, {thud}.

	The etymology of "foo" is obscure.  When used in connection
	with "bar" it is generally traced to the WWII-era Army slang
	acronym {FUBAR}, later bowdlerised to {foobar}.

	However, the use of the word "foo" itself has more complicated
	antecedents, including a long history in comic strips and
	cartoons.

	"FOO" often appeared in the "Smokey Stover" comic strip by
	Bill Holman.  This surrealist strip about a fireman appeared
	in various American comics including "Everybody's" between
	about 1930 and 1952.  FOO was often included on licence plates
	of cars and in nonsense sayings in the background of some
	frames such as "He who foos last foos best" or "Many smoke but
	foo men chew".

	Allegedly, "FOO" and "BAR" also occurred in Walt Kelly's
	"Pogo" strips.  In the 1938 cartoon "The Daffy Doc", a very
	early version of Daffy Duck holds up a sign saying "SILENCE IS
	FOO!".  Oddly, this seems to refer to some approving or
	positive affirmative use of foo.  It has been suggested that
	this might be related to the Chinese word "fu" (sometimes
	transliterated "foo"), which can mean "happiness" when spoken
	with the proper tone (the lion-dog guardians flanking the
	steps of many Chinese restaurants are properly called "fu
	dogs").

	Earlier versions of this entry suggested the possibility that
	hacker usage actually sprang from "FOO, Lampoons and Parody",
	the title of a comic book first issued in September 1958, a
	joint project of Charles and Robert Crumb.  Though Robert
	Crumb (then in his mid-teens) later became one of the most
	important and influential artists in underground comics, this
	venture was hardly a success; indeed, the brothers later
	burned most of the existing copies in disgust.  The title FOO
	was featured in large letters on the front cover.  However,
	very few copies of this comic actually circulated, and
	students of Crumb's "oeuvre" have established that this title
	was a reference to the earlier Smokey Stover comics.

	An old-time member reports that in the 1959 "Dictionary of the
	TMRC Language", compiled at {TMRC} there was an entry that
	went something like this:

	FOO: The first syllable of the sacred chant phrase "FOO MANE
	PADME HUM."  Our first obligation is to keep the foo counters
	turning.

	For more about the legendary foo counters, see {TMRC}.  Almost
	the entire staff of what became the {MIT} {AI LAB} was
	involved with TMRC, and probably picked the word up there.

	Another correspondant cites the nautical construction
	"foo-foo" (or "poo-poo"), used to refer to something
	effeminate or some technical thing whose name has been
	forgotten, e.g. "foo-foo box", "foo-foo valve".  This was
	common on ships by the early nineteenth century.

	Very probably, hackish "foo" had no single origin and derives
	through all these channels from Yiddish "feh" and/or English
	"fooey".

	[{Jargon File}]

	(1998-04-16)

<programming> The name given in {Smalltalk} and other
	{object-oriented languages} to a procedure or routine
	associated with one or more {classes}.  An {object} of a
	certain class knows how to perform actions, e.g. printing
	itself or creating a new instance of itself, rather than the
	function (e.g. printing) knowing how to handle different types
	of object.

	Different classes may define methods with the same name
	(i.e. methods may be {polymorphic}).  The term "method" is used
	both for a named operation, e.g. "PRINT" and also for the code
	which a specific class provides to perform tha
	t operation.

	Most methods operate on objects that are instances of a
	certain class.  Some object-oriented languages call these
	"object methods" to distinguish then from "{class methods}".

	In {Smalltalk}, a method is defined by giving its name,
	documentation, temporary local variables and a sequence of
	expressions separated by "."s.

	(2000-03-22)