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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.javascript
Subject: Re: why the ! operator can be used to determine a string is null?
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 03:20:38 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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References: <omcm6a$rga$1@gioia.aioe.org> <null-20170808165244@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <slrnooju52.303.jon+usenet@sable.unequivocal.eu> <empty-string-20170808184854@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <slrnoolr4r.303.jon+usenet@sable.unequivocal.eu> <XnsA7CCA5CE3CA47eejj99@194.109.6.166> <87zib8g4eb.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <10915888.O9o76ZdvQC@PointedEars.de> <877eycdzm9.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <2062468.ElGaqSPkdT@PointedEars.de>
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Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> writes:

> Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>
>> Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> writes:
>>> Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>> Further complicated by the fact that there is a character called null
>>>> (sometimes Null, Nul or NULL) so a string can "be null" in that it
>>>> contains just that character.
>>> As we are talking about ECMAScript, it is the Unicode character U+0000
>>> NULL (to my surprise, not “NUL” as in US-ASCII) whose standard
>>> representation is a boxed “NUL” (AFAIK, it is *never* called “null”,
>>> “Null” or “Nul”):
>> 
>> If you can find an original copy of the standard you'll see a table of
>> control characters that gives "Abbreviations" (though most are acronyms)
>> and, as you say, NUL is the abbreviation for the first one.  After that
>> table is an explanation that gives the name as "Null" and the
>> abbreviation as "Nul" (for some reason not in caps).
>
> *I have just cited* “an original copy of the standard”, so please cite 
> evidence supporting your claims.

X3.4-1967 "The American Standard for Information Interchange".  You may
have to go to a physical library to find it.  I can cite an online scan
of an article from the November 1967 Western Union Technical Review
explaining this new code, but obviously you will need to see the
original.

>> Since it's not a proper name, people write "null" for it just as they
>                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>> write "bell" for the character abbreviated as in the table as BEL.
>
> Weasel wording.  People who do not know what they are talking about are 
> irrelevant when one is faced with deciding the correctness of an answer
> to a question.

The issue is what people write and the confusion it causes.  At no point
have I said any of this is or is not "correct".  The meaning of the
phrase "null string" is confused precisely by people using words
incorrectly or, at best, ambiguously.

-- 
Ben.