I started trying to change the return type to boost::optional, but that turned out to be a lot of work and I realized the if statements would then have to check the optional for existence AND check the value for non-emptiness, which would just be silly.
I started trying to change the return type to boost::optional, but that turned out to be a lot of work and I realized the if statements would then have to check the optional for existence AND check the value for non-emptiness, which would just be silly.