List of Computer Term Etymologies - F

F

• finger — Unix command that provides information about users logged into a system.

Les Earnest wrote the finger program in 1971 to provide for users who wanted information about other users on a network or system. Before the finger program, the only way to get this information was with a who program that showed IDs and terminal line numbers for logged-in users; people used to run their fingers down the "who" list. Earnest named his program after this phenomenon.

• foobar — from the U.S. Army slang acronym, FUBAR. Both foo and bar are commonly used as metasyntactic variables.