"NULL" returned by a function

[Victor Porton <porton@narod.ru>]

What if I want to make a function which returns either a value of type T or 
a value signifying "nothing" (like null pointer)?

To make things worse, T is a controlled type, so if we return just "access 
T" the finalization of the object of type T may be easily overlooked.

What is the best way to implement this? variant record? whatever?

Or maybe should I modify the type T to allow it contain "null" state? (In 
fact the particular T which I use can be easily modified to allow storing 
there null and checking whether it's state is null. But I think on the way 
not to be dependent on the ability to change the definition of T.)

-- 
Victor Porton - http://portonvictor.org