ScopeExit | C11 scope guard library

A lot of what you're talking about is opinion-based, so I'm going to start with my own opinions.

In the C++ world, we expect RAII. If you want to get along well with other developers, you're both going to encounter it, and you're going to buck the standard if you decide to do something in a different fashion just because it's what you're accustomed to from Go.

Furthermore, C++ developers don't use FOPEN :-). The C++ standard library includes perfectly good RAII-enabled classes, and we use them. So having to implement RAII really means making proper choices of existing standard classes where possible or making sure your objects are RAII-compatible.

I pretty much never have to redesign my code to implement RAII. My choice of classes handles it automatically.

So while the code you've shown is interesting, it's actually more work than RAII. Every time you use FOPEN, you have to also remember to do your defer thing. Isn't it just so much easier to use std::ifstream or std::ofstream? Then it's already handled for you. (And this can be said about other times where your code would have to implement RAII on the spot. It's already done by picking the right classes.)

So, no, it's not neater and more intuitive, because you have to remember to do it. Pick the right classes, and you don't have to remember.

As for the #defines -- they're just there to make sure your variables have unique names and to shortcut the constructor of the defer class.