A compound statement consists of zero or more statements enclosed in curly braces ({}). A compound statement can be used anywhere a statement is expected. Compound statements are commonly called “blocks.”
compound-statement:
{statement-listopt}
statement-list: statement statement-list statement
The following example uses a compound statement as the statement part of the if statement (see “The if Statement” for details about the syntax):
if( Amount > 100 )
{
cout << "Amount was too large to handle\n";
Alert();
}
else
Balance -= Amount;
Note:
Because a declaration is a statement, a declaration can be one of the statements in the statement-list. The result of this is that names declared inside a compound statement, but not explicitly declared as static, have local scope and (for objects) lifetime. See “Scope” in Chapter 2, on topic for details about treatment of names with local scope.