CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#
prestomanifesto
prestomanifesto

Reputation: 12796

Floating curly braces in C#

I ran across a piece of C# code today I had not seen before. The programmer defined a block of code using only curly braces (no if, class, function, etc).

{
    int i = 0;
}
i++; //compile error

Is there a purpose to this other than making the code look more organized? Is it good, bad, or whatever practice to use this "floating" contexts?

Upvotes: 16

Views: 10305

Answers (6)

Joseph
Joseph

Reputation: 25523

You can use an open and close set of curly braces to define a self containing block, which has its own scope.

This is generally not considered good programming practice, though.

Usually if someone is doing something like this, it's probably better to create a method/function in its place.

Upvotes: 16

Abe Miessler
Abe Miessler

Reputation: 85056

There is no purpose to that code at all. Probably an artifact from something else he/she was trying to do. As the comment shows this won't even compile because i is out of scope.

From a coding style perspective I personally don't like it and I've never seen someone use floating braces to "organize" their code before.

Upvotes: 0

bigphildogg86
bigphildogg86

Reputation: 176

It limits the scope of the variable to within that block. So the variable i would not be able to be seen outside of those braces.

It can also be a preference on if someone wants to separate code but using this when not necessary would in most cases be superfluous.

Upvotes: 1

RBZ
RBZ

Reputation: 2074

Any variable inside the "scope" of these curly braces will be out of scope outside of it.

Upvotes: 3

Yuck
Yuck

Reputation: 50855

The braces {} in C# define scope. Anything defined within them goes "out of scope" once the braces are terminated.

The example seems kind of pointless. I can't imagine why it would be used in real world code. I'm assuming you pared down the code presented?

Upvotes: 1

davecoulter
davecoulter

Reputation: 1826

The purpose of this is to illustrate that the int i is actually in a different scope than the incremented i below it.

Upvotes: 1

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