Win API wrapper classes for handles
You can always add another layer of indirection to avoid the awful overloading of operator& and ugly Attach or Detach and return a pre-wrapped instance from there.
If you can use C++0x in VS2010 or gcc, or have other ways of accessing std::unique_ptr<>, then you can do this (error checking omitted for brevity):
struct hkey_deleter{ void operator()(HKEY hkey) { ::RegCloseKey(hkey); }};typedef std::unique_ptr<HKEY__, hkey_deleter> regkey;regkey MyRegOpenKeyEx(HKEY hKey, LPCTSTR lpSubKey, DWORD ulOptions, REGSAM samDesired){ HKEY hOpenedKey = NULL; ::RegOpenKeyEx(hKey, lpSubKey, ulOptions, samDesired, &hOpenedKey); return regkey(hOpenedKey);}void SomewhereElse(){ ... regkey r = MyRegOpenKeyEx(HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, nullptr, 0, KEY_READ); ...}The hkey_deleter will make sure that the registry key gets closed when the scope is exited or regkey::reset() is called.