One of the first ways to automate this was by using destructors. For instance, we could do the same thing in C++ using vector, the destructor of which will be automatically called when it’s no longer in scope:

int send_request() {
    size_t n = read_size();
    vector<int> elements = vector<int>(n);

    if(read_elements(elements.size(), &elements[0]) < n) {
        return -1;
    }

    return 0;
}

But in more complex cases, especially when sharing objects across multiple threads, just the destructor will not be sufficient. In comes the simplest form of garbage collection: reference counting. For each object, you simply know how many times it is referred to and when that count reaches zero the object can be safely reclaimed. A well-known example of that would be the shared pointers of C++:

int send_request() {
    size_t n = read_size();
    auto elements = make_shared<vector<int>>();

    // read elements

    store_in_cache(elements);

    // process elements further

    return 0;
}

Now, to avoid reading the elements next time the function is called, we may want to cache them. In such a case, destroying the vector when it’s out of scope is not an option. Therefore, we make use of shared_ptr. It keeps track of the number of references to it. This number increases as you pass it around and decreases as it leaves scope. As soon as the number of references reaches zero, the shared_ptr automatically deletes the underlying vector.