you want the container to return a std::optional not a null reference. the nice thing about a reference is in practice nobody writes code to make them null even though it is easy and works as expected in most cases (i have done it to prove a point. No I won't share more, the conclusion is don't do that)

throwing an exception is sometimes a useful alternative, as is the std::expected variant of exceptions. Optional is likely what you want, and it is much less confusing.

-- 
  Henry Miller
  hank_at_[hidden]
On Wed, Apr 3, 2024, at 17:57, Frederick Virchanza Gotham via Std-Proposals wrote:
> Back in 1993, they were talking about null references:
>
>     http://www.virjacode.com/cxxproposals/compstdcxx/article86414
>
> If we were to have null references now 31 years later, here's how I'd do them:
>
>     int &myref = *nullptr;
>
> Normally it's undefined behaviour to dereference a nullptr, but if you
> dereference the compile-time constant expression 'nullptr', you get
> the null reference. And so then if you write a function that takes a
> reference, you can check if it's a null reference as follows:
>
>     void Func(int &arg)
>     {
>         if ( arg == *nullptr ) return;
>     }
>
> You can use a static_cast to get a null reference of a specific type:
>
>     static_cast<MyClass&>( *nullptr );
>
> As Pascual said back in 1993, this would be useful for a method that
> returns an element from a container:
>
>      Y& X::operator[](size_t index){...}
>
> If your index is out of range, the method returns a null reference.
> -- 
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