[FurrBall]

Pasting a response:

Blocks are an improvement, but not the same as RAII. A block is literally converted to a try-finally by the compiler. It is the same thing with a cleaner syntax. There is no safety added to the old Java way. A programmer can forget to put his stuff in a block and leak the resource the same as he forgets to use a try-finally. The onus is on the consumer, not the library writer.

With C++ RAII the onus is removed from the consumer. The consumer writes safe code automatically, no onus to remember any special clean up idioms.

[pjmlp]

As long as the object is stack allocated or a member variable.

[FurrBall]

Well you do have to ban raw pointers. Heap allocation is safe with smart pointers.