You can use implicitly dereferenced variables. These variables use the Resource Acquistion Is Initialization (RAII) principle to do their clean up. Also, these variables have the same limiitations as automatic variables: StreamWriter f(L"D:\\listfile.txt"); f.Write(L"begin"); ... // When "f" goes out of scope, it will be deterministically disposed of. In order to obtain a tracking handle to an implicitly dereferenced variable, you must prefix it with "%".

It's probably for compatibility with MFC :) Steve S Developer for hire

There was a recent "shoot off" between Raymon Chen and (I believe) Lippman or soe othre C#/.NET guy, optimizing Raymonds Dictionary sample. Note that this is unmanaged vs. managed, not quite what you asked. But the outcome should be interesting nonetheless: (roughly, from memory): - for low investment, C# is as good as unmanaged C++ - when investing more, cost of C++ optimizations rises faster than cost of C# optimizations - Raymond finally won with no chance to beat him after he used a custom memory allocator (The C++ version now completed in the time it took the CLI runtime to start) Would find you a link, but internet access is weird here... We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP Linkify! || Fold With Us! || sighist