Either an owned or borrowed value, with type known at compile time

This crate offers a MaybeOwned trait which allows you to pass either an owned or a borrowed value to a function. As opposed to [std::borrow::Cow] and [beef::Cow], this trait

• allows you to keep call sites clean, as you don't need to explicitly construct Cows;
• allows you to perform a [static dispatch] without relying on [constant propagation], if possible;
• consequently benefit from various optimizations (notably, [dead code elimination] and [constant propagation]), if possible.

However, it also creates additional mental overhead and in case cases might cause genericity-induced problems.

Eventually, definition sites might become cleaner with an attribute proc macro.

Example

```rust,norun use rand::Rng; use maybeowned_trait::MaybeOwned; use std::path::{Path, PathBuf};

// Definition site is a bit more verbose than with Cow, yet still reasonable fn myfn(path: impl for<'a> MaybeOwned = &'a Path>) { // Of course, you'll have a meaningful condition here if rand::threadrng().gen::() { let pathbuf: PathBuf = path.toowned(); println!("Owned buf: {:?}", path_buf); } else { let path: &Path = path.borrow(); println!("Borrowed path: {:?}", path); }; }

let path = PathBuf::from("hello"); // Call sites are clean myfn(&path); myfn(path); ```

With beef [feature] enabled, this crate also provides the implementations of MaybeOwned for [beef::Cow] and [beef::lean::Cow].