[frutiger]

Sure, but the person I was relying to said they were writing code that returns references (not implementing the standard library). And my surprise was that they have to do it so often.

My overall advice here would be that if you find yourself implementing vector-like data structures very often, then it is time to take a second look the design.

[umanwizard]

Fair enough, but even if you’re not writing code like this, you still have to use it, so you’re still exposed to the unsafety.