Can I force std::vector to leave a memory leak?

Question

Can I force std::vector to not deallocate its memory after the vector goes out of scope?

For example, if I have

Answer 1

The vector is desiged to prevent leaks.

But if you want to shoot yourself in the foot, it's possible. Here's how you prevent the vector from deallocating its internal array:

int *foo()
{
    std::vector v(10,1);

    int *ret = v.data();
    new (&v) std::vector; // Replace `v` with an empty vector. Old storage is leaked.
    return ret;
}

As the other answers say, you should never do it.