After this chapter, the reader should be well aware of the dangers of an ad-hoc approach to resource management. Fortunately, we have learned the most widely used idiom for resource management in C++; the RAII idiom. With this idiom, each resource is owned by an object. Constructing (or initializing) the object acquires the resource, and deleting the object releases it. We saw how using RAII addresses the problems of resource management, such as leaking resources, accidentally sharing resources, and releasing resources incorrectly. We have also learned the basics of writing exception-safe code, at least as far as the leaking or otherwise mishandling resources is concerned. Writing RAII objects is simple enough, but there are several caveats to keep in mind. Finally, we reviewed the complications that arise when error handling has to be combined with RAII.

RAII is a resource management idiom, but it can also be viewed as an abstraction technique: the complex resources are hidden behind simple resource handles. The next chapter introduces another kind of abstraction idiom, type erasure: instead of complex objects, we will now hide complex types.