what don’t u get it? why did I make this? or what is the point of this type?

if you are unfamiliar with std::expected then check out https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/expected.html

it’s basically a type that let you return either a “value” or an “error” and the caller of the function has to check which did the function return. it’s a modern way of handling errors in C++ that was introduced in C++23

because “if constexpr(…)” is a c++17 feature which i’m using it to allow usage of nl::unexpected() to return a nl::expected<nl::monostate, E> to nl::expected<T, E> in this copy constructor

template<class U>
expected(const expected<U, E>& other) : _has_value(other.has_value())   // a copy constructor  
{
        if (_has_value)
        {
                if constexpr (std::is_same<U, monostate>::value) // it checks if U == monostate
                {
                        // makes an empty instance of "T"
                }
                else if constexpr (std::is_same<U, T>::value) // it checks if U == T
                {
                        // otherwise copies "other._value" into _value
                }
                else
                {
                        static_assert(
                            not std::is_same<U, T>::value, "no available conversion between the provided value types");
                }
        }
        else
        {
                new (std::addressof(_error)) E(other.error());
        }
}

 template<class E>
 expected<monostate, E> unexpected(const E& e) // then this can covert <monostate, E> to <T, E> fine because of this copy constructor
 {                
         return expected<monostate, E>(e);
 }


// example usage

nl::expected<int, std::string> meow = nl::unexpected("error");

but i could take a different approach and make 2 copy constructor one that explicitly takes

expected(const expected<monostate, E>& other)

and another

expected(const expected& other)

I was also using “std::is_same_v” which is a c++17 feature instead “std::is_same<>::value” but i made a commit and changed it. it now compiles with c++14 but with c++17 extensions