Why can't variables be declared in a switch statement?

Question

I\'ve always wondered this - why can\'t you declare variables after a case label in a switch statement? In C++ you can declare variables pretty much anywhere (and declaring

Answer 1

Most of the replies so far are wrong in one respect: you can declare variables after the case statement, but you can't initialize them:

case 1:
    int x; // Works
    int y = 0; // Error, initialization is skipped by case
    break;
case 2:
    ...

As previously mentioned, a nice way around this is to use braces to create a scope for your case.