There's no type error at all, we're talking about delaying the destruction of some_string so that the `s` (which is a &str) is valid outside the if. The string

There's no type error at all, we're talking about delaying the destruction of some_string so that the `s` (which is a &str) is valid outside the if. The string literal is a &str with a infinite lifetime, and so can of course be safely restricted to have the same lifetime as the other branch (done implicitly). However, it's easily possible to have the &str come from temporaries of different types in the two branches. This would restrict the static destruction case to only working through an `if` when the "parent" values have exactly the same types; which doesnt seem nearly as valuable and possibly not worth the effort.