metasyntactic
Adjective
Meaning
metasyntactic (not comparable)
(linguistics, computing) Used in describing syntax; relating to metasyntax.
Related terms
Examples
Any symbol or word which does not violate the syntactic rules of the language can be used as a metasyntactic variable.
A metasyntactic variable is something that stands for another piece of text.
Czech The standard list of Czech metasyntactic variables is "huhu", "lala", "keke", "koko", "kuku", "fifi", "bubu".
For example, you should use a metasyntactic variable in the documentation of a function to describe the arguments that are passed to that function.
For specifications written in natural language, nonsense words are commonly used as metasyntactic variables.
It is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable in programming.