[lxe]

This is the kind of stuff that the compiler needs to really understand. If all this de-referencing and referencing magic is at the control of the user, it needs to have meaningful effect on what the code does. Otherwise we might as well just write C.

[silisili]

The compiler does understand it and did what was asked - it was just written rather poorly.

There are valid use cases for wanting to take a copy, and then pass along a pointer of the copy. Perhaps to go through a series of modification methods that don't touch the original. I'd sure hate it if the compiler tried to outsmart me on that and changed the behavior away from what I'd written.