NINO

[Lanell]

Stands for Nothing In, Nothing Out. The acronym NINO (pronounced nee-no) is a computer science term that states if nothing is entered into a program, nothing is produced. It can also be translated, No Input, No Output.
Computers operate by processing information. If there is no input (or information to process), there can be no output. Input can be entered by a human, such as typing text in a word processor or clicking on a link in a web browser. It can also be entered by software, such as a bootstrap operation or a bot that automatically executes commands.
In computer programming, NINO can explain why a function does not produce a result. If it does not receive the parameters it needs to run correctly, the function may fail or produce a NULL value. If the function receives invalid input, it may either return nothing or a garbage result. This process can be summarized as GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).
A well programmed function checks all input and produces an error message if the data is either missing or invalid. This prevents NINO and GIGO errors since bad input can cause bugs or crashes within a program.