noncliff: improvements to apply! and dictvaltype

[Fe-r-oz]

Improving dictvaltype and apply!.

If you want to submit an unfinished piece of work in order to get comments and discuss, please mark the pull request as a draft and ping the repository maintainer.

Please address only one topic or issue per pull request! Many small PRs are much easier to review and merge than one large PR.

Before merging, all changes and new functionality should be marked in the CHANGELOG file, but feel free to just leave your CHANGELOG notes in the PR description, to avoid merge conflicts with other requests modifying that file. The maintainer will add these CHANGELOG notes for you if you do so.

Before considering your pull request ready for review and merging make sure that all of the following are completed (please keep the clecklist as part of your PR):

• The code is properly formatted and commented.
• Substantial new functionality is documented within the docs.
• All new functionality is tested.

If possible, keep your git history not too wild (rebase and squash commits, keep commits small and semantically separated) so that review is easier.

[Fe-r-oz]

This pr implements a safe version of apply!

P.S. There is no ref[] due to which there was test error in non-cliff nonclifford quantum optics test branch. commented that out for a time being.

[Krastanov]

Ah, this is great, much easier to work with! Thanks for setting it up this way. Now it is not even necessary to worry about squashing commits (mostly), because it is on top of another branch. Request a review whenever you feel it is ready.

Indeed, do not worry about the changelog check at all.

[Fe-r-oz]

Please review!

[Krastanov]

Hi, Feroz! Please be more careful with review requests -- here for instance you made a review request but then you continued making changes. It is better to wait a couple of days before making a review request to make sure you are done with your changes. Of course, this is not a big deal, especially if it happens just occasionally, however with your pull requests this is pretty common. Your contributions are appreciated, but reviewing is a significant investment of time, so I need to be selective when I start reviewing things.

[Fe-r-oz]

Apologies for that. I really appreciate your time and your patience. Sorry for these annoying commits towards the very end.

[Krastanov]

looks like a good start. I left in some initial comments

[Fe-r-oz]

Thank you, addressed all of your comments. I think it's ready for review.

[Krastanov]

Almost there! Some minor cosmetic things left.

[Fe-r-oz]

Thank you for your suggestions. I think this is ready for review.

[Krastanov]

Thanks!