as others pointed out, its the compiler. but maybe this requires a Microsoft FQA. Maybe these compiler "bugs" are really more microsoft "anti-features" designed to slowly erode people's faith in C++ on MS platforms and nudging them toward C# or other .NET "solutions" ?

I just can't believe that one of the biggest monolithic organizations with unlimited budgets and decades of experience developing tools for their own platform(!!) would make such careless mistakes or miss out on rather obvious optimizations. And it also sickens me that random devs out there are wasting hours of their lives doing completely unpaid MS product QA work. At least when jobs are outsourced to the third-world, the laborers are paid something.