c / intermediate
Snippet
The Error-Cleanup Pattern with goto
In C, goto is often used to jump to a single cleanup block, ensuring resources are freed without duplicating code in multiple error checks.
snippet.c
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#include <stdio.h>#include <stdlib.h>int process_file(const char *path) {FILE *f = fopen(path, "r");if (!f) return -1;char *buf = malloc(1024);if (!buf) {goto cleanup_file;}// ... processing ...free(buf);fclose(f);return 0;cleanup_file:fclose(f);return -1;}
Breakdown
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goto cleanup_file;
Jumps to the label if allocation fails.
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cleanup_file:
Label defining the start of the resource cleanup logic.