reflifc default constructibility of types

[FireFlyForLife]

In principle, reflifc wraps an AbstractReference with the accompanying ifc File. These both have sane defaults. An AbstractReference has AbstractReference::is_null() and the file can be nullptr.

I wanted to start a discussion, if making these types default constructible was something you had already considered. I've found it nice if I can default construct them.

[AndreyG]

Yes, it could be nice to allow default constructibility of reflifc types. But the downside is that in such case these types should provide method bool is_valid() and every client must invoke either if (!param.is_valid()) ... or assert(param.is_valid());. Every method returning reflifc::SomeType must be annotated if it could return invalid value. Every method accepting param of reflifc::SomeType should be documented if it's ready to handle invalid value.

I'm not sure if it's worth it. Could you, please, show the case when default construction of the reflifc type is needed?