NAL is an assembly idiom on Pre-R6 instruction sets (which is
implemented in binutils), or an actual instruction on Release 6
instruction set, and is used to read the PC, due to the nature of the
MIPS architecture.
Since we can't read the PC directly, on pre-R6 we use a always-not-taken
Branch and Link operation to the address of the next instruction, which
effectively writes the address to $31, thus PC is read with offset +8.
MIPS Release 6 removed the conventional Branch and Link instructions,
but kept NAL as an actual instruction for compatibility on the assembly
level. The instruction has the same encoding of the pre-R6 ones, and
with the same behavior: PC + 8 -> $31.
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