https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18478
--- Comment #4 from jpdut...@gmail.com --- (In reply to Walter Bright from comment #2) > The error is on the function returning the reference, not the function using > (or not using) the return value. Because of separate compilation, it has to > be this way. I assume you are speaking about fn2. Storing the result to a temporary before returning removes the error: auto tmp = fn1_normal(a); return tmp; I would expect the compiler to implicitly decay the returned reference to a normal value when it sees that fn2 does not return by reference, the same way it is done when first saving it into a temporary. In any case, the error "returning fn1_normal(a) escapes a reference to local variable a" does not describe what is actually going on, because no reference would actually escape even if this error was disabled. --
