While the parent technically said "at the start of functions", at least C89 (I don't remember about K&R) allowed declarations at the start of any block. This i

While the parent technically said "at the start of functions", at least C89 (I don't remember about K&R) allowed declarations at the start of any block. This is not incompatible with minimizing scope - just introduce more blocks. And in fact, introducing a block to bound the scope of a variable allows a smaller scope than simply declaring it halfway through a function, as you can also end it early.