[jerf]

The first one is obviously wrong, which I mean in the sense that anyone who knows what defer is will know that, not in the sense that you've posted an obviously bad post (it is a fair question!). defer is a statement, not a declaration, and does not take effect until it is executed like any other statement. It follows standard structured programming rules; line 2 does not execute until line 1 is done. (A rule so simple and obvious we often don't think about, especially since structured programming has basically won and everything we use nowadays is structured, but it is still a rule that we use in programming.)