I've had the other kind of trouble with this. While I've almost never had trouble with code declaring variables near the site where they are first needed, I've

I've had the other kind of trouble with this. While I've almost never had trouble with code declaring variables near the site where they are first needed, I've on quite a few occasions missed top-level declarations, perhaps because I carried with me a memory of a declaration done in another function (or something like that) ... resulting in major "global" catastrophes (sorry ;) While I acknowledge that declaring vars within ifs/whiles and such can lead to misunderstanding, declaring vars close to the site of first use at the top-level block of a function has never resulted in a bug for me. This approach also diffs better.