[SideburnsOfDoom]

"cleanup section at the bottom of the function" is pretty rare in JavaScript, which is what the original blog post is discussing. Same with Java, C#, Ruby etc.

No, it doesn't play well with early return, so avoid mixing them.

[vidarh]

Actually, in Ruby we have "ensure"

    def foo arg
      return true if arg == 42
      puts "got past the guard"
      raise "blah"
    ensure
      puts "ensure always"
    end
    
    foo(42)
    foo(3)

The "ensure" blocks gets executed whether or not you return early, throw exception or return at the end of the block.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

There are several constructs for it, see also "try ... finally" on C# and Java, and "using" statements in C#.

All make the "goto manual cleanup at end" less necessary, and make early return easier to use.

[wildmusings]

I should have specified that I was talking about C. You usually don’t need this pattern when you have garbage collection or C++ RAII.