There is a higher rule so to speak which basically says - don't even think about compiling things that are provably not used. Advanced template programming depends on this a lot, so even if it might be a bit gray-zonish when a compiler clearly sees that the result of a construct is not used it's just going to eliminate it. Especially when it's provably safe like in this case.
You may want to try a few variants if you want - like making pointer a param of a function, result of a function, leaving a pointer uninitialized (best chance for triggering compiler complaint), doing a straight cast of 0 (best chance of being conplaint-free).
