Rust term for RAII tools

blonk · December 30, 2025, 2:01pm

What would you call something whose primary function is triggered on Drop?

Would it be uncontroversial to call it a "drop guard"?

Say, for instance, you have an object that begins measuring time on creation and when it is dropped it will calculate the duration of the object and log how long it lived. Would it be correct to say that it is a "timing drop guard"?

nerditation · December 30, 2025, 2:18pm

I think "drop guard" is appropriate and understandable.

just for the record, a generic construct is named "scope guard"^[1] in scopeguard, one of the most used crates (almost 500M total downloads on crates.io as of now -- the end of 2025).

github.com/bluss/scopeguard

src/lib.rs

bb9882228


      
          /// `ScopeGuard` is a scope guard that may own a protected value.
          ///
          /// If you place a guard in a local variable, the closure can
          /// run regardless how you leave the scope — through regular return or panic
          /// (except if panic or other code aborts; so as long as destructors run).
          /// It is run only once.
          ///
          /// The `S` parameter for [`Strategy`](trait.Strategy.html) determines if
          /// the closure actually runs.
          ///
          /// The guard's closure will be called with the held value in the destructor.
          ///
          /// The `ScopeGuard` implements `Deref` so that you can access the inner value.
          pub struct ScopeGuard<T, F, S = Always>
          where

although it's really about drops, not scopes: the guard can be moved anyway ↩︎

consistent-milk12 · December 30, 2025, 2:43pm

Why not just TimerGuard? All guards are eventually dropped (that's what makes it a guard), you don't have to emphasize it.

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Rust term for RAII tools

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