[TUHS] Whence did "XXX" come about?

Steve Nickolas usotsuki at buric.co
Fri Sep 4 08:13:09 AEST 2020


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.


More information about the TUHS mailing list