As outlined in
https://aturon.github.io/style/naming/conversions.html
`to_` functions names should only be used for expensive operations.
Thus `to_option` is better named `as_option`. Also, putting type
names into method names is considered bad style; what the user is
really trying to get is a reference. This `as_ref` is even better.
Also, we are missing a mutable version of this method.
Finally, there is a bug in the signature of `to_option` which has
been around since lifetime elision: originally the returned reference
had 'static lifetime, but since the elision changes this become
the lifetime of the raw pointer (which does not make sense, since
the pointer lifetime and referent lifetime are unrelated). We fix
the bug to return a reference with a fresh lifetime which will be
inferred from the calling context.
[breaking-change]
6ac4a30810