RAII is just automation and semantic sugar for something like this (or the equivalent set of goto labels that do the freeing at the end of the function): {

RAII is just automation and semantic sugar for something like this (or the equivalent set of goto labels that do the freeing at the end of the function): { void *buffer = malloc(SIZE_MAX); if (buffer) { if (!do_stuff(buffer)) { free(buffer); return; } more_stuff(buffer); free(buffer); } return; } If you wanted something like that in C it doesn't need to emulate C++ style RAII with classes and strongly typed constructors. It could look like something like, for example, where you just define pairs of allocator and free functions: allocdef void *autobuffer(malloc, free); ... { autobuffer buffer(SIZE_MAX); if (buffer) { if (do_stuff(buffer)) { return; } more_stuff(buffer); } return; } The implementation would effectively be a Lisp style macro expansion encoded in the C compiler (or preprocessor) that would just basically write out the equivalent of the first listing above.