> Being able declare variables anywhere doesn't make the code better… It does, though. The ability to declare variables "anywhere" and allows a reduction in th

> Being able declare variables anywhere doesn't make the code better… It does, though. The ability to declare variables "anywhere" and allows a reduction in the portion of the code where a variable exists uninitialized, or initialized with a dummy value which should never be used, or holding an obsolete value which is not intended to be used. It also allows more variables to be declared `const` (which requires them to be initialized in the declaration, which must occur after the initial value is computed) which helps to detect accidental assignment and also makes the code easier to review. It's worth noting that you can more-or-less declare variables "anywhere" in C89 too—you just have to wrap the variable's scope in a compound statement. From that point of view, C99 doesn't change where variables can be declared. It just lets you remove some syntactic clutter.