From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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Date: Thu,  8 Sep 2011 21:41:05 +1200
Message-ID: <CAFiGbxi4tuz18VvmnEXe2fxcRaSn3UfVJJwMXuEi-tC6=rrK2Q@mail.gmail.com>
From: Winston Kodogo <kodogo@gmail.com>
To: 9fans@9fans.net
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Subject: [9fans] C question - completely OT, but I'd like to know the answer
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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.