Comment by duped

> That doesn't really matter for discussing how correct code _should_ be written.

It absolutely does when you're talking about the semantics of virtually every program on earth

> It's equivalent to "if you call malloc(), you should call free()" -- you shouldn't demand that functions you invoke will call free() on your pointer. Same for open files.

There are many cases where the one calling malloc cannot be the one calling free and must explicitly document to callers/callees who is responsible for memory deallocation. This is a good example of where no convention exists and it's contextual.

But open files aren't memory and one cannot rely on file descriptors being closed without errors in practice, so people don't, and you can't just repave decades of infrastructure for no benefit out of ideological purity.