Implementing boost::optional in c++11

Question

I am experimenting with implementing boost::optional like data structure using c++11 features. Here is what I have so far :

template<typename T>
struct maybe {
  bool valid;

  union {
    T value;
  };

  maybe() : valid(false) {}
  maybe(const T& _v) {
  valid = true;
    new (&value) T(_v);
  }
  maybe(const maybe& other) {
    if (other.valid) {
      valid = true;
      new (&value) T(other.value);
    }
    else valid = false;
  }

  ~maybe() {
     if (valid)
       value.~T();
  }

  bool is_valid() { return valid; }

  operator T&() {
    if (valid) return value;
    throw std::bad_exception();
  }
};

I make use of the unrestricted union feature to create a properly aligned space for the optional value that can be stored in-situ, instead of dynamically allocation space. Things work mostly, except when I want to create a maybe<> with a reference. For instance maybe<int&> causes g++ 4.7 to complain :

error: ‘maybe<int&>::<anonymous union>::value’ may not have reference type ‘int&’
because it is a member of a union

What should I do to make the maybe class store references? Any other improvements/suggestions to the class are also welcome.

Answer 1

To make this work with references you definitely need an explicit specialization, because you can't do placement new of a reference: you need to use pointers for storage.

Beyond that, the code is missing a copy assignment operator. A move constructor, and move assignment operator would also be nice (especially since that's the #1 reason to reimplement boost::optional: the one in boost is lacking them).