The Java Language: Statements

Statements and expressions in Java appear within a code block. A code block is syntactically a series of statements surrounded by an open curly brace ({) and a close curly brace (}). The statements in a code block can include variable declarations and most of the other sorts of statements and expressions we mentioned earlier:

 {  
 int size = 5;  
 setName("Max");  
 ...  
 }  

Methods, which look like C functions, are in a sense just code blocks that take parameters and can be called by their names—for example, the method setUpDog():

 setUpDog( String name ) {  
 int size = 5;  
 setName( name );  
 ...  
 }  

Variable declarations are limited in scope to their enclosing code block—that is, they can’t be seen outside of the nearest set of braces:

 {  
 int i = 5;  
 }  
 i = 6; // Compile-time error, no such variable i  

In this way, code blocks can be used to arbitrarily group other statements and variables. The most common use of code blocks, however, is to define a group of statements for use in a conditional or iterative statement.