4 ms·

There are probably as many languages using "nil" as there are ones that call it "null". Nil: Ruby, Go, Oberon, Modula-2, Swift, various Pascal dialects, Lisp?.

• devmunchies 10y ago
  put SQL on the "null" team as well
  • flukus 10y ago
    Depending on the sql variant, null could be more like nil.
    • devmunchies 10y ago
      If it varies from NULL then its not SQL compliant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_compliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_compliance
• jack9 10y ago
  Also.. Nil: Lua Null: PHP
• cderwin 10y ago
  For what it's worth, Rust has both Null (for unsafe null pointers) and None (wrapping a type that may or may not exist at any given point). None is used far, far more frequently in my experience than null in rust though.
• kibwen 10y ago
  Rust deliberately doesn't have anything in the language called "null" (there's `std::ptr::null()`, but that's for C interop). The only thing that fits the bill here is the unit type/empty tuple, `()`, which is sometimes called "nil".
  • lobster_johnson 10y ago
    I know, but it's "std::ptr::null", not "std::ptr::nil", which was the point of this discussion. (Clearly it has a concept of null pointers, even if they're used in a more limited manner than other languages.)
    • kibwen 10y ago
      But you can't use `std::ptr::null()` in the same way that you use null in the other languages mentioned there. It's literally just there for C interop, and it's called that because that's the terminology that C uses. For finding an analogue for the typical null use case in Rust, one would use the `None` variant of the `Option` enum.
      • yberreby 10y ago
        Nitpick: `std::ptr::null()` is not just there for C interop. It's also useful when writing pure Rust unsafe code.
        • Gankro 10y ago
          Can confirm, used null all the time in Rust. The raw pointers are important native Rust constructs, although they do skew to supporting C idioms as much as possible (e.g. `* const T` and `* mut T` is basically a worthless distinction within Rust itself).
        • sdegutis 10y ago
          So in other words, std::ptr::null is Rust's version of null for situations where you would actually use null in C, except in general Rust discourages trying to use it like it's C. Seems reasonable.
• rurban 10y ago
  And perl with undef vs (). undef a special symbol such as null, and () the empty list as nil. Neither nil, null, none or undef refer to (void*)NULL, they are usually a special symbol in the global symbol table. Only some languages use null/nil as NULL/0 internally.
• wcarron 10y ago
  Huh, didn't know it was split that way. I'd seen a couple examples in C/Java/Rust/JS/Java and assumed the vast majority of them used 'null'. Thanks for edifying!