Why call close()?

[Peter87]

I see some people on this forum explicitly close files with the close() member function. I understand if you want to call close on a global fstream object or something but inside a small function I don't understand the point. It's like calling clear() on a local vector as the last thing in a function.

So, why are people calling close() when there is no need to?

[Cubbi]

It only makes sense to explicitly call fstream's close() if you're ready to handle the exceptions that function may throw (the destructor is non-throwing)

It is probably heritage of C I/O programming practices.

[Peter87]

Thank you Cubbi! That's a good point that I have never thought about. If close() throws or not depends on what exception flags you have set but you can still check for errors without exceptions.