or_else of an Optional with a reference

[juxeii]

All implementations of or_else in the case of an optional with a reference return optional<T>.
I ran into an issue with that, and when changing all signatures to optional<T&> it was fixed.
Isn't returning an optional<T> in these cases creating a copy of the contained reference?

Example:

struct IF
{
	virtual void foo() = 0;
};

struct Impl : IF
{
	void foo() override {}
};
Impl instance{};

tl::optional<IF&> test = tl::optional<IF&>{instance}.or_else([]() { std::cout << "bad"; });

[juxeii]

Can anyone confirm that the example above does not work?
What am I missing?

[dedlocc]

Hi, I ran into the same issue, with a use case similar to OP's. It seems that tl::optional<T&>::or_else should indeed return tl::optional<T&> instead of tl::optional<T>.

There are currently no test cases that would check any of those overloads for optional references.

I suggest changing the return types as described above. Let me know if you want me to create a PR for that.