> Actually, they sort of can: an Option<&T> takes the same space as a &T, with the None variant of the Option being represented as a null behind the covers. Th

> Actually, they sort of can: an Option<&T> takes the same space as a &T, with the None variant of the Option being represented as a null behind the covers. There is no “sort of can” here. It just so happens that None uses the same representation as null, but by that logic you’d say that u64 can be null because 0 has the same representation as null.