Pro/con: Initializing a variable in a conditional statement

Question

In C++ you can initialize a variable in an if statement, like so:

if (CThing* pThing = GetThing())
{
}

Why would one consider this bad or g

Answer 1

About the advantages:

It's always recommended to define variables when you first need them, not a line before. This is for improved readability of your code, since one can tell what CThing is without scrolling and searching where it was defined.

Also reducing scope to a loop/if block, causes the variable to be unreferenced after the execution of the code block, which makes it a candidate for Garbage Collection (if the language supports this feature).