Beautiful C++: 30 Core Guidelines for Writing Clean, Safe, and Fast Code

Chapter 5.6

E.6: Use RAII to prevent leaks

Deterministic destruction

We have waxed lyrical about deterministic destruction already in this text, but it bears repeating that it is the single greatest feature of C++. Unfortunately, we have a small problem with object storage duration.

There are four classes of storage duration. An object with static storage duration will be created prior to execution of main() and be destroyed after main() returns. An object with automatic storage duration will be created as soon as it is declared and be destroyed the moment its name falls out of scope. An object with thread-local storage duration will be created when a thread begins and be destroyed when the thread ends.

Dynamic storage duration implies user-specified ...