Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: "...the value becomes,indeterminate each time the declaration is reached" Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2019 14:18:31 -0800 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 22 Message-ID: <86bm2zeclk.fsf@mailhub.linuxsc.com> References: <98ab0a2d-bdf2-47fa-8424-0217228c6a8f@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="0b225037cf1357b33e38b5d7f82ed86f"; logging-data="4073"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18TT1y1xwrB9a/1zZ2m7K2khWbf62Edn+s=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:UHpaobxc8lph/I6WDKnfU9FK7sk= sha1:SLOdRJEOFIbDtiaxwrlnUczIIAA= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.c:141338 Andrey Tarasevich writes: > On 1/30/2019 3:27 AM, Bart wrote: ... >> Just put the declaration at the top of the block so this ambiguity >> doesn't arise. (Maybe /that/ was the intention of the wording in >> the standard as I suggested.) > > This is a "language-lawyer" kind of question, not a question about > coding style. And I highly doubt that this part of language > specification has coding style as it rationale. A language-lawyer type question is one about parsing the text of the Standard and understanding what it requires. Here there is no question about what is required. Your question is about why whoever made the decision chose the requirement they did. There is no technical necessity for this choice; it is just what they decided. So the question Why is really one of human motivation, which takes it out of the language-lawyer domain, and matters of coding style may very well have played a role (whether they actually did or not) in the discussions.