*Utils.find### to return Optional [SPR-17484]

[spring-projects-issues]

László Stahorszki opened SPR-17484 and commented

With the release of Optional in Java 8, I think it would be appropriate for methods, like AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation() to return Optional<T>, so that we don't need additional checking parts if an annotation in this instance exists or not

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Issue Links:

• Introduce null-safety of Spring Framework API [SPR-15540] #20099 Introduce null-safety of Spring Framework API

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

This has been considered but rejected due to the impact: either widespread binary compatibility breakages through changing the return type, or overloaded methods with Optional return types in many places. Also, Kotlin does not specifically support Optional, so it's a bit cumbersome to work with such methods there.

Since we have a nullability story with a non-null-by-default policy and @Nullable annotations in 5.x, we at least provide a formal definition for such null-returning cases now.