Definition of "nil"

General Meaning

• Nil means "nothing" or "zero." It refers to the absence of anything or the value zero, especially in contexts like sports scores or measurements where something is completely lacking

• In British English, "nil" is commonly used in sports to indicate a score of zero, as in "They lost two nil to the other team"

• In American English, it can also mean something so small as to be unmeasurable or non-existent, such as "our chances were nil" or "His credit rating is nil"

Etymology

• The word "nil" comes from Latin, as a contraction of "nihil," meaning "nothing"

Usage in Programming

• In programming, particularly in languages like Pascal, Smalltalk, and LISP, nil refers to an empty set, a list with no entries, or the absence of an object (such as a pointer with no value)

• In Objective-C, "nil" is a pointer to the memory address 0x0, used to represent a non-existent object instance. It is distinct from "NULL" (used for scalar values or pointers in C) and "NSNull" (a singleton object used as a placeholder in collections)

• In some programming contexts, "nil" is interchangeable with "null" or "None" to represent an uninitialized, undefined, or empty value

Other Uses

• "Nil" can also refer to various acronyms, music bands, mathematical concepts (like "nil ideal" in ring theory), and other specific terms in different fields

Summary Table

Context| Meaning of "nil"
---|---
General English| Nothing; zero; non-existent
Sports| Score of zero
Programming| Absence of value/object; empty/null pointer
Etymology| From Latin "nihil" (nothing)

Examples

• "Their legal rights are virtually nil." (non-existent)

• "They lost two nil to the other team." (sports score)

• In code: id someInstance = nil; (Objective-C, no object instance)