Is if(TRUE) a good idea in C?

Question

In the C programming language, it is my understanding that variables can only be defined at the beginning of a code block, and the variable will have the scope of the block it w

Answer 1

As so many answers already said, you don't need the "if" stuff. Just create the bare block. But i want to get at another point. In C, you can create variable declarations anywhere in a block, not only at the start. In C89, you had that restriction. Starting with C99 (that's 10 years now), you don't have that restriction anymore, although some compilers will moan anyway. GCC won't, though, if you tell it to use the most "recent" C Standard with the -std=c99 option.

Because there are still compilers in existence that moan by default, i would not prefer mixing declarations and code though. I would keep putting declarations at the start of blocks for compatibility reasons.