SUMMARY
The use of Option<T> types instead of null values is a different strategy to handle cases where the absence of information is important. Option<T> types are a cleaner approach than null values because there are no differences in their use for value and reference types. They are also more powerful because they take a “metadata” approach to store additional information about a value, thereby enabling the full use of a type’s value range, including null itself.
Another important argument in favor of Option<T> is the possibility of viewing it as a monad, which enables the chaining of operations that work on the type without the need of explicit special case handling. This topic is discussed in depth in Chapter 17.
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