This is exactly why I was careful enough to include the phrase "in the usual case", because it would not be too hard to doctor a situation where the compiler wi

This is exactly why I was careful enough to include the phrase "in the usual case", because it would not be too hard to doctor a situation where the compiler will not optimize the Option away, either because the compiler is not perfect, or because of some clever juggling, or for some other reason. But in the usual case, you get zero-cost abstraction.