[OskarS]

> The patterns I knew and saw with std::optional usually returned "new something", but yeah, you can return a copy too if the class fits in the stack.

Oh, fer crying out loud... It DOES NOT return a copy, it constructs it directly in place. This is called "copy elision" (also known as "return value optimization", or RVO), and has been done by compilers for three decades, and is actually mandated behaviour in modern C++. I don't know where you saw these examples, but you would never use operator new with std::optional: it takes a value, not a pointer.

You have a very annoying style of being wrong about absolutely everything you say, and then acting superior about it when people call you on your bullshit.