Compound Statement or Block

Description

A compound statement allows you to group statements together in a block of code and use them as if they were a single statement.

Variables and constants declared in the block are local to the block and to any inner blocks unless declared extern. If the objects are initialized, the initialization is performed each time the compound statement is entered from the top through the left brace ({) character. If the statement is entered via a goto statement or in a switch statement, the initialization is not performed.

Any object declared with static storage duration is created and initialized when the program is loaded for execution. This is true even if the object is declared in an inner block.

Example

if (x > y)
{
   int temp;
   temp = x;
   x = y;
   y = temp;
}

In this example, variable temp is local to the compound statement. It can only be accessed within the compound statement.