It might have improved in the last few years, but as of 2018, MSVC would not do named value return optimization for the case where all branches returned the sam

It might have improved in the last few years, but as of 2018, MSVC would not do named value return optimization for the case where all branches returned the same local variable, in my experience. There had to be just the one penultimate return statement, in order for NRVO to kick in.