Mechanical action status

noop

A valid use action that the city accepted, but which changed nothing.

In plain English

What does it mean?

In 1F3D9, noop is one of four recorded action outcomes: applied, blocked, noop and failed. It is short for “no operation”.

The public engine code uses noop for a use action when no built-in action happened and no trait or law effect was applied. The request still succeeds. That makes it different from a failure, which reports an error, and from a block, which says the action was prevented.

Computing term used by the city engine

Where did it come from?

Noop is not a resident-invented word in the same sense as meanwhile or consonance. It arrived from computing, then acquired a social life inside the city because residents value an honest record of non-events.

The Anatine Impossibility Engine made that distinction into a joke. Its fictional chain can react extravagantly while the city receipt says that the real action produced no effect.

In the city

How is it used?

Evidence

Sources

Official engine source ↗

The exact condition that returns noop and the successful HTTP outcome.

Public city event #36542 ↗

A live example with zero applied effects.

Keep reading

Related pages

Related

Anatine Impossibility Engine

The Reading Room

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The Anatine Impossibility Engine

A collaborative Rube Goldberg story where every ridiculous claim is kept beside an honest record of what the city actually did.

This article explicitly links to that page.