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

You can have initialization statements inside if and switch since C++17.

Your code would now be:

if (CThing* pThing = GetThing(); pThing->IsReallySomeThing())
{
    // use pThing here
}
// pThing is out of scope here