[9fans] C question - completely OT, but I'd like to know the answer

[Winston Kodogo <kodogo@gmail.com>]

Sorry to bother the list, but I thought I might get a sensible answer
here from the few remaining people in the world who actually
understand C.

The following bit of code seems to be more or less syntactically OK:

switch (nurdge)
{
    int nigel = 1;
    case 0:
		if(nigel == 1)
			printf("nigel is one.\n");
		else
			printf("nigel is not one.\n");

	default:
		printf("The value of nigel is %d", nigel);
}

Something close to this compiles under my C compiler, and yet the
variable "nigel" is not initialised, and the test inside the first
case test is pretty much certain to print "nigel is not one". Although
my C++ compiler does complain about an uninitialised variable.

I'm puzzled as to why the line "int nigel = 1;" is syntactically OK,
and although it seems to have declared the variable "nigel" - else the
following code would fail to compile - has failed to give it the
initial value of 1, as requested.