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Brian Goetz （Java语言设计架构师）对 Optional 设计意图的解释：

Optional is intended to provide a limited mechanism for library method return types where there needed to be a clear way to represent “no result," and using null for such was overwhelmingly likely to cause errors.

从中可以看出，Optional 主要目的是用于处理返回值可能为空的情况。