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You could argue that an end iterator is the archetypal example of an “invalid value”. And end iterator does not represent any valid part of a vector. It’s one-past-the-end, which serves as a marker. And not even that, in set and map, where the one-past-the-end end iterator doesn’t even point to the physical end of the container’s range.

Or what if you’re writing a test generation library?¹ You need to test invalid values, and you need a way to signal “I want you to generate an invalid value of a class to test this function that uses it”. For example, a function may only take a certain integer range. Any value outside of that range is invalid, and you should test for it.

If you should never create an invalid value, you may as well say you should never test how invalid values are handled.

I did consider calling it a null value, but a null value can be a valid representation of a concept. For a contrived example, what if you’re writing a simple wrapper around BSD sockets? If a socket cannot be created, you get a -1. That is an invalid value. If the divine decree is that a constructor should never create an invalid value, then such a socket wrapper class can never be a legal construct.

You could argue that you should throw an exception if an invalid value is about to be created, but exceptions aren’t always the desired behaviour.