Clean Error Handling with goto

Snippet

Clean Error Handling with goto

While often discouraged, using 'goto' for centralized resource cleanup is a common pattern in intermediate C (e.g., in the Linux kernel). it prevents deep nested if-statements and ensures that all opened resources are closed regardless of where an error occurs.

snippet.c
c
int process_file(const char *path) {
    FILE *f = fopen(path, "r");
    if (!f) return -1;
 
    char *buffer = malloc(1024);
    if (!buffer) {
        goto cleanup_file;
    }
 
    // ... process file ...
 
    free(buffer);
cleanup_file:
    fclose(f);
    return 0;
}

Breakdown

goto cleanup_file;

Jumps directly to the cleanup section to avoid leaking the file handle.

cleanup_file:

A label marking the start of the resource deallocation code.

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Clean Error Handling with goto

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