[willvarfar]

Well I think the function scope the most useful, but wish there was block scope available too.

So what I really wish was that languages used dot notation to go up scope eg ..name is that name two blocks out. This was one of the good parts of VB syntax which I miss in other languages. Think how much nicer it is than python's nonlocal and global, for example!

[pcwalton]

What's the use case for function scoped defer? I have never once needed function scoped RAII in C++ or any other language.

[barsonme]

It's not terribly uncommon for larger functions to do something like

    func someSQLStuff() {
        tx, err := createTx()     
   
        defer func() {
            if err != nil {
                tx.Rollback()
                log(err)
            } else {
                tx.Commit()
            }
         }()

         rows, err = tx.QueryContext( ... )

         // more SQL
    }

Basically, function-scoped cleanup. Like closing opened files.

[pcwalton]

But that defer is already lexically at the function scope, so block-scoped defer would do the same thing.

[barsonme]

Ah, sorry, you meant function-scoped vs block-scoped not just in general. Yeah, agreed.

[Groxx]

I have a comment at a higher level with a broader example, but for Go at least this is somewhat common:

    func f(i interface{}) {
      if closable, ok := i.(closable); ok {
        defer closable.close()
      }
      // do stuff with i, maybe other casts, etc
    }

There aren't many nice options for "if I can call X, defer a call to X" aside from shoving it into an `if`, where it'd be captured by that scope. I mean, you could do something like

    deferrable := func(){}
    if closable {
      deferrable = closable.close
    }
    defer deferrable()

but imagine doing that every time. It'd work, sure, but it'd also be more annoying.

[pcwalton]

Couldn't you do:

    func closeIfNecessary(object interface{}) {
        closable, needsClosing := object.(closable)
        if needsClosing {
            closable.close()
        }
    }

And then just do:

    func f(i interface{}) {
        defer closeIfNecessary(i)
        ...
    }

Doing it this way also saves you boilerplate by factoring the downcast out into a separate function.

[Groxx]

As long as you can always call .close() regardless of the code below, yep - that'd work, and is definitely more readable.

If you can't call it unless [some other conditions], it goes back to the same kind of problem though. "closable" may not be a good choice on my part, as they're often called unconditionally.

[br1]

Collecting tasks from all iterations to await before returning.

[pcwalton]

Fair enough. But it's something like 5 lines of code to write that manually, and writing it explicitly is clearer. With implicit function-scoped defer, someone might refactor the code to inline the body of the function into its caller and break it.

[br1]

I totally agree with you.

[br1]

It's true that defer is more powerful at function scope. You can always recover block scope with an unnamed func. But it doesn't fit with normal lexically scoped constructs. You get gotchas.

I would love to be able to explicitly affect other scopes as you mention, for example to define two classes at the same time.