Yes, but you'd have to generate that dummy value upon creating the real value, and then pass it along with the real value so it's available to the spot that nee

Yes, but you'd have to generate that dummy value upon creating the real value, and then pass it along with the real value so it's available to the spot that needs to consume it. This would ultimately end up being just a much more awkward way of having the real value just track a boolean internally for this and slapping Option around any non-trivial return value from the method.