Scope and Ref and Borrowing

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 17 November 2014 at 20:07:54 UTC, Freddy wrote:
> Why not make the compiler copy the variable how's address is
> taken to the heap like how a closure does it? Would it be hard
> that optimize away?
> ----
> int* c;
> int main(){
>      int a;
>      int* b=&a;//a is now a reference to the heap
>      c=&a;//safe
> }
> ----

It would be safe, but it'd be another hard to detect source of GC 
allocations. Besides safety, an important purpose of borrowing is 
to avoid those.