Why separate variable definition and initialization in C++?

Question

I\'m currently working on some quite old C++ code and often find things like

int i;
i = 42;

or

Object* someObject = NULL;
someO         


        

Answer 1

Consider the following case:

SomeType object;
if( whateverCondition ) {
   object = getObjectOneWay();
} else {
   object = getObjectAnotherWay();
}

this way it's clear that both branches assign the variable and its initial value is irrelevant. It's rarely worth that however.