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.