In rust-bitcoin, opcodes past the 0xba opcode are named as such: OP_RETURN_187, OP_RETURN_188, …, OP_RETURN_254. Their description is all the same: Synonym for OP_RETURN. The definition for OP_RETURN is Fail the script immediately. (Must be executed.)., which implies (if I understand correctly) that a script that contains an OP_RETURN in an unexecuted branch of an OP_IF statement is not made invalid by the sole presence of the opcode.
Yet in the Bitcoin Core codebase, those opcodes are not even defined in the opcode enum, and a line defines the maximum value that an opcode can be to be 0xb9. Together these two mean that I’m not quite sure what to make of these opcodes… are they valid? Not valid? Can they be used as rust-bitcoin implies, or not used as Bitcoin Core implies? I assume there is more to this story, but just looking at the codebases as is I wasn’t able to get a feel for how to describe these opcodes.
Also implied in this question is: if they are indeed synonyms to OP_RETURN as rust-bitcoin indicates, can they be used interchangeably and in place of OP_RETURN the way it is used for storing data?
