We consider the optimal stopping problem with nonlinear f -expectation (induced by a BSDE) without making any regularity assumptions on the payoff process ξ and in the case of a general filtration. We show that the value family can be aggregated by an optional process Y . We characterize the process Y as the E f -Snell envelope of ξ. We also establish an infinitesimal characterization of the value process Y in terms of a Reflected BSDE with ξ as the obstacle. To do this, we first establish some useful properties of irregular RBSDEs, in particular an existence and uniqueness result and a comparison theorem.where T S,T denotes the set of stopping times valued a.s. in [S, T ] and E f S,τ (·) denotes the conditional f -expectation/evaluation at time S when the terminal time is τ .The above non-linear problem has been introduced in [14] in the case of a Brownian filtration and a continuous financial position/pay-off process ξ and applied to the (nonlinear) pricing of American options. It has then attracted considerable interest, in particular, 2 Note that in the case of a not necessarily non-negative pay-off process ξ this result holds up to a translation by the martingale XS := E[ess sup τ ∈T 0,T ξ − τ |FS] (cf. e.g. Appendix A in [30]). More precisely, the property holds forṽ := v + X andξ = ξ + X.