Intermediate C Programming, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4Pointers

DOI: 10.1201/9781003257981-4

4.1 Scope

Chapter 2 described several rules about the stack memory. One of those rules was that each function could see only its own frame. This is called scope. A new scope is created every time a pair of { and } is used. This could be inside of a function body, for example, an if statement, or a while loop. The following example shows two scopes:

1    void f(int a, int b) 2    { 3      // this is a scope, call it X 4      int i; 5      for (i = 0; i < a + b; i ++) 6        { 7          // this is another scope, call it Y. a, b, i visible here 8          int j; // j is visible only between the { … } pair 9          // some code 10       } 11     // j is not visible here 12   }

In the scope ...