Discussion

C++’s language-enforced constructor/destructor symmetry mirrors the symmetry inherent in resource acquire/release function pairs such as fopen/fclose, lock/unlock, and new/delete. This makes a stack-based (or reference-counted) object with a resource-acquiring constructor and a resource-releasing destructor an excellent tool for automating resource management and cleanup.

The automation is easy to implement, elegant, low-cost, and inherently error-safe. If you choose not to use it, you are choosing the nontrivial and attention-intensive task of pairing the calls correctly by hand, including in the presence of branched control flows and exceptions. Such C-style reliance on micromanaging resource deallocation is unacceptable when C++ provides direct automation via easy-to-use RAII.