C++ Primer Plus

Compound Statements, or Blocks

The format, or syntax, for writing a C++ for statement might seem restrictive to you because the body of the loop must be a single statement. That’s awkward if you want the loop body to contain several statements. Fortunately, C++ provides a syntax loophole through which you may stuff as many statements as you like into a loop body. The trick is to use paired braces to construct a compound statement, or block. The block consists of paired braces and the statements they enclose and, for the purposes of syntax, counts as a single statement. For example, the program in Listing 5.8 uses braces to combine three separate statements into a single block. This enables the body of the loop to prompt the user, read input, ...