Resource Management (in an Exceptional World)

So far, we have looked at local variable scope, and how automatic and dynamic lifetime variables are dealt with when the variable goes out of scope – automatic lifetime variables (those placed on the stack) are fully destructed while dynamic lifetime variables (those allocated to the heap by the programmer) are not destructed: we just lose any access to them. We have also seen that, when an exception is thrown, the nearest matching handler is found and all the local variables between the throw point and the handler will be destructed through the stack unwinding process.

We can use this knowledge to write robust resource management classes that will relieve us from the need to keep track of resources (dynamic lifetime variables, file handles, system handles, and so on) to ensure that they are released (back into the wild) when we are done with them. The technique that's utilized to manage resources, both under normal operating and...