Reader's question:  

In his excitement, he deleted all the files, but they were restored later from a backup copy - no harm, no foul.

Could you explain “no harm, no foul”?

My comments:

"No harm, no foul" was originally a cliché in American basketball, descriptive of a situation where a player makes illegal contact with another but only so slightly that referees do not call foul by blowing the whistle on him.

In basketball terminology, as a matter of fact, such inadvertent contact is called "incidental contact". It happens all the time and is usually ignored by referees. Basketball people of course all understand that their sport involves a lot of physical contact and therefore inconsequential contacts should be let go in order to maintain a smooth flow of the game. In other words, nobody likes to hear whistles blowing every five seconds and watch a game proceeding by fits and starts, as if it were an automobile with ignition problems.

Anyways, in the above example, "no harm, no foul" means this:

It's wrong for him to delete all the files but, since this causes no real "harm" (because he restored them later from a backup copy), the incident should be ignored.

In other words, no need to cry "foul" and make a fuss – you know, by reporting to the big boss and having him punished in accordance with company discipline etc and all that sort of tedious nonsense.

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本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

Zhang Xin has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.