[TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Dave Horsfall]

For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more work" or 
"look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself.

Whence did it come about?  I think I saw it as early as PWB, but can't be 
sure.

-- Dave, wondering how many nanny-filters he triggered with "XXX"

Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Warner Losh]

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The earliest my quick grep could find was 4.0BSD. I didn't find it in this
sense in pwb, but it was a quick grep...

xxx is used extensively in prior versions, but there it's meaning is
'placeholder' or 'don't care'. Mostly for /tmp/XXXX files, but also for
things like Jxxx handles all the jump commands or dates of the form 24 Feb
XXXX or stuff like that.

Warner

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:34 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

> For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more work" or
> "look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself.
>
> Whence did it come about?  I think I saw it as early as PWB, but can't be
> sure.
>
> -- Dave, wondering how many nanny-filters he triggered with "XXX"
>

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Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Warner Losh]

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I'll also add that this seemed foreign when I had patches that had XXX in
them I submitted to the linux folks in the early 90s. It was second nature
in the BSD side of things. But I don't know if that's a Berkeley thing or a
Bell Labs thing Berkeley picked up...

Warner

On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 12:11 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> The earliest my quick grep could find was 4.0BSD. I didn't find it in this
> sense in pwb, but it was a quick grep...
>
> xxx is used extensively in prior versions, but there it's meaning is
> 'placeholder' or 'don't care'. Mostly for /tmp/XXXX files, but also for
> things like Jxxx handles all the jump commands or dates of the form 24 Feb
> XXXX or stuff like that.
>
> Warner
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:34 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:
>
>> For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more work" or
>> "look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself.
>>
>> Whence did it come about?  I think I saw it as early as PWB, but can't be
>> sure.
>>
>> -- Dave, wondering how many nanny-filters he triggered with "XXX"
>>
>

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Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Dan Halbert]

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My guess is that this was invented independently several times. I think 
I used it myself in the 70's (and not on UNIX), as soon as I had a text 
editor, because "XXX" was easy to search for and was not going to 
overlap with variable names, etc.

There's a discussion here: 
https://www.snellman.net/blog/archive/2017-04-17-xxx-fixme

Dan H.

On 9/3/20 4:35 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
> I'll also add that this seemed foreign when I had patches that had XXX 
> in them I submitted to the linux folks in the early 90s. It was second 
> nature in the BSD side of things. But I don't know if that's a 
> Berkeley thing or a Bell Labs thing Berkeley picked up...
>
> Warner
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 12:11 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com 
> <mailto:imp@bsdimp.com>> wrote:
>
>     The earliest my quick grep could find was 4.0BSD. I didn't find it
>     in this sense in pwb, but it was a quick grep...
>
>     xxx is used extensively in prior versions, but there it's meaning
>     is 'placeholder' or 'don't care'. Mostly for /tmp/XXXX files, but
>     also for things like Jxxx handles all the jump commands or dates
>     of the form 24 Feb XXXX or stuff like that.
>
>     Warner
>
>     On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 11:34 AM Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org
>     <mailto:dave@horsfall.org>> wrote:
>
>         For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more
>         work" or
>         "look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself.
>
>         Whence did it come about?  I think I saw it as early as PWB,
>         but can't be
>         sure.
>
>         -- Dave, wondering how many nanny-filters he triggered with "XXX"
>


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Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Steve Nickolas]

On Thu, 3 Sep 2020, Dan Halbert wrote:

> My guess is that this was invented independently several times. I think I 
> used it myself in the 70's (and not on UNIX), as soon as I had a text editor, 
> because "XXX" was easy to search for and was not going to overlap with 
> variable names, etc.

I use "EOW" when I'm iterating through something, and stop partway 
through, for the same reason: I'm not likely to find that exact 
combination anywhere else. (It's not random: it stands for "End of WIP")

I use "XXX" too - usually in the form "XXX FIXME".

-uso.

Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Christopher Browne]

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On Thu., Sep. 3, 2020, 6:14 p.m. Steve Nickolas, <usotsuki@buric.co> wrote:

>
> I use "XXX" too - usually in the form "XXX FIXME".


Timing is everything, especially in humour...

I nearly choked on something when I realized this thread was going on as I
read notes on the PostgreSQL list where the somewhat famous (?) Tom Lane
observed that he was planning to comment a commit to password management
code with "XXX FIXME"

:-) :-) :-)

So this is clearly an idiom still in active use!!!

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Re: [TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

[Warren Toomey]

On Fri, Sep 04, 2020 at 03:32:58AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> For yonks I've been seeing "XXX" as a flag to mean "needs more work" or
> "look at this carefully, just in case" etc, and I use it myself.

Me too, for the same reason: the code is tricky or subtle or needs fixing.
It does tend to make my students raise their eyebrows; perhaps they have
their nanny filters turned on :-)

Cheers, Warren