auto storage class - infer or RAII?

[Kristian Kilpi]

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 12:24:35 +0200, Walter Bright  
<newshound at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> The auto storage class currently is a little fuzzy in meaning, it can  
>>> mean "infer the type" and/or "destruct at end of scope".
>>  As Don explained to me, 'auto' is a storage class in D and in C along  
>> with 'const' and 'static', so type inference doesn't occur because  
>> 'auto' is present so much as because a type is omitted.  The presence  
>> of 'auto' merely serves to indicate that the statement is a declaration  
>> (since 'auto' is the default storage class and therefore otherwise  
>> optional).  Type inference occurs with the other storage classes as  
>> well.  I think this is an important distinction because it seems to be  
>> a common misconception that 'auto' means 'infer the type of this  
>> expression' and that a specific label is necessary for this feature.
>
> True. Consider that type inference works in these cases:
>
> 	static a = 3;	// a is an int
> 	const b = '3';	// b is a char
>
> So auto doesn't actually ever mean "infer the type", it's just needed  
> because one of the other storage class keywords isn't there.

So according to this logic, auto should always mean RAII?
E.g.

   auto c = new Class;  //RAII

If not, then one could argue that

   static a = 3;

declares non-static variable, i.e. the static keyword is used for type  
inference only (whenever the type is omited).