A group of statements enclosed in curly {} braces is a compound statement or "block". (The closing brace should not generally be followed by a semicolon. If it is, then the semicolon is considered a separate null statement.) Compound statements are used for function bodies, user-defined data types, and anywhere the language syntax requires a statement as will be seen in this chapter.
In particular, a block may be NESTED within another block, and may contain declarations of variables local to the inner block. This construct is rarely used, since creating a separate function to accomplish the processing of the inner block usually improves code readability and modularity.
