pointer check in unit tests

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 03/11/2020 09:37, Miklos Vajna wrote:
> (If you see a case where a pointer is returned and it can't be ever
> nullptr, then we should fix the return type to a be reference. Caolan
> did lots of fixes like that recently.)

That's up for debate.  For example, if a sufficiently large fraction of 
call sites wants a pointer, it can be awkward to change a function's 
return type from pointer to reference.  (And doing so without carefully 
auditing all call sites can silently introduce regressions.)

T& is something rather different than T* plus "cannot be null".  Just as 
the C++ type system isn't capable of expressing the type "int, but never 
42", it isn't capable of expressing the type "T*, but never nullptr".