Compound Statements (Blocks)

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.”

Syntax

compound-statement :

{ statement-list_opt }

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. As a result, names declared inside a compound statement, but not explicitly declared as static, have local scope and (for objects) lifetime. See Scope in Chapter 2 for details about treatment of names with local scope.