Is there a favored idiom for mimicing Java's try/finally in C++?

Question

Been doing Java for number of years so haven\'t been tracking C++. Has finally clause been added to C++ exception handling in the language definition?<

Answer 1

Thought I'd add my own solution to this - a kind of smart pointer wrapper for when you have to deal with non-RAII types.

Used like this:

Finaliser< IMAPITable, Releaser > contentsTable;
// now contentsTable can be used as if it were of type IMAPITable*,
// but will be automatically released when it goes out of scope.

So here's the implementation of Finaliser:

/*  Finaliser
    Wrap an object and run some action on it when it runs out of scope.
    (A kind of 'finally.')
    * T: type of wrapped object.
    * R: type of a 'releaser' (class providing static void release( T* object )). */
template< class T, class R >
class Finaliser
{
private:
    T* object_;

public:
    explicit Finaliser( T* object = NULL )
    {
        object_ = object;
    }

    ~Finaliser() throw()
    {
        release();
    }

    Finaliser< T, R >& operator=( T* object )
    {
        if (object_ != object && object_ != NULL)
        {
            release();
        }
        object_ = object;

        return *this;
    }

    T* operator->() const
    {
        return object_;
    }

    T** operator&()
    {
        return &object_;
    }

    operator T*()
    {
        return object_;
    }

private:
    void release() throw()
    {
        R::release< T >( object_ );
    }
};

... and here's Releaser:

/*  Releaser
    Calls Release() on the object (for use with Finaliser). */
class Releaser
{
public:
    template< class T > static void release( T* object )
    {
        if (object != NULL)
        {
            object->Release();
        }
    }
};

I have a few different kinds of releaser like this, including one for free() and one for CloseHandle().