Internal static variables in C, would you use them?

Question

In C you can have external static variables that are viewable every where in the file, while internal static variables are only visible in the function but is persistent

Answer 1

Some use cases for static variables:

• you can use it for counters and you won't pollute the global namespace.
• you can protect variables using a function that gets the value as a pointer and returns the internal static. This whay you can control how the value is assigned. (use NULL when you just want to get the value)