It's not silent, you do declare that you want it released; you just do it before and it applies to all early returns. For example MUTEX_LOCK_GUARD(&lock)

It's not silent, you do declare that you want it released; you just do it before and it applies to all early returns. For example MUTEX_LOCK_GUARD(&lock) for (i = 0; i < n; i++) if (a[i] == x) return i; return -1; Real world example here: https://github.com/qemu/qemu/blob/master/block/iscsi.c#L325 https://github.com/qemu/qemu/blob/master/block/iscsi.c#L325 And the implementation: https://github.com/qemu/qemu/blob/master/include/qemu/lockable.h https://github.com/qemu/qemu/blob/master/include/qemu/lockab... (after inlining, the abstraction is completely zero cost).