Open, write and close a file

I have a small 10-liner function that writes some data to a file using an std::ofstream. I did not explicitly call .close() at the end of my function, but it failed code review with the reason that it is better to explicitly call it for style and verbosity reasons. I understand there is no harm in calling .close() explicitly, but does calling it explicitly just before a return statement indicate a lack of understanding or faith in RAII?

The C++ standard says:


§27.8.1.2


virtual ~ basic_filebuf ();


[3] Effects: Destroys an object of class basic_filebuf. Calls close().

Am I justified in my argument that calling .close() at the end of a function is redundant and/or unnecessary?

bool SomeClass::saveData()
{
    std::ofstream saveFile(m_filename);

    if (!saveFile.is_open())
        return false;

    saveFile << m_member1 << std::endl;
    saveFile << m_member2 << std::endl;

    saveFile.close(); // passed review only with this line
    return true;
}

The function is only supposed to return false if the file could not be opened for writing.

I would argue the exact opposite.

Explicitly closing a stream is probably not what you want to do. This is because when you close() the stream there is the potential for exceptions to be thrown. Thus when you explicitly close a file stream it is an indication you both want to close the stream and explicitly handle any errors that can result (exceptions or bad-bits) from the closing of the stream (or potentially you are saying if this fails I want to fail fast (exception being allowed to kill the application)).

If you don't care about the errors (ie you are not going to handle them anyway). You should just let the destructor do the closing. This is because the destructor will catch and discard any exceptions thus allowing code to flow normally. When dealing with the closing of a file this is what you normally want to do (if the closing fails does it matter?).

StackExchange Code Review Q#540, answer score: 74