NUL

Nul is a word used in several languages to denote zero or nothing. In Dutch, Danish, and Afrikaans, nul is the standard term for the numeral zero, and it also functions in common phrases related to emptiness or absence. The word is cognate with the English null and with other Germanic forms, reflecting a common Indo-European origin from Latin nullus.

In computing, nul has several distinct meanings. The ASCII control character NUL (code 0) represents a zero value and is used in some languages as a terminator or placeholder in strings and data structures. In operating systems, the null device discards all data written to it. In Windows and DOS environments this device is named NUL and can be used to suppress output or to test redirection, for example, echo hello > NUL. In Unix-like systems, the analogous device is /dev/null and serves the same purpose for input/output redirection. Additionally, in many programming languages the NUL byte is used to terminate strings in languages such as C and C++, and the concept of a null value is central to programming logic.

The term nul also appears in documentation and localization where Dutch, Danish, or Afrikaans speakers discuss zero or null values. In programming, the broader concept of null denotes the absence of a value, though exact syntax varies and is usually represented by literals such as null, nil, none, or similar forms rather than the spelled word nul in most programming languages.