svenn wrote:Calling me an idiot did in fact provoke me to write a reply;
I didn't call you an idiot, I said your statement is idiotic, two different things
svenn wrote:Even in linguistics there is a difference
don't bring up linguistics, as you're just gonna fail, here's what the oxford dictionary has to say about null, pay close attention to its second meaning:
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definitio ... ull?q=null
Here's the official spanish dictionary, pay close attention to the 5th meaning:
http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=nullo
Just to clear it up a bit, the word null comes from the latin word nullus. In latin the number 0 didn't exist as they considered that you cannot count something that didn't exist (which is physically true), but in modern maths and physics there is a need to express the absence of something with numbers, so we use 0. Still has the same meaning: 0 = null = nothing. Null and 0 have two different etymologies (one being arabic, one being roman) but they express the same thing: absence of something, nothing, etc, which is completely different from undefined. Something that is undefined doesn't mean, at all, that it doesn't exist, since it's undefined you CAN'T really say if it exist or if it doesn't.