Semicolon at end of 'if' statement

Question

Today, after half an hour of searching for a bug, I discovered that it is possible to put a semicolon after an if statement instead of code, like this:

if(a          


        

Answer 1

Why? It's because its easier for compiler writers. You don't have to make a special case to check for semicolons after if(cond) and has an added usage of allowing

if (cond && maybeFunc())
    ;// Code here I want to ignore

Even though it's actually a terrible idea to allow this. It's just easier to allow and then to add a case to check this.