Why can’t variables be declared in a switch statement?

I've always wondered this - why can't you declare variables after a case label in a switch statement? In C++ you can declare variables pretty much anywhere (and declaring them close to first use is obviously a good thing) but the following still won't work:

switch (val)
{
case VAL:
// This won't work
int newVal = 42;
break;
case ANOTHER_VAL:
...
break;
}

The above gives me the following error (MSC):

initialization of 'newVal' is skipped by 'case' label



Answer:

Case statements are only 'labels'. This means the compiler will interpret this as a jump directly to the label.The problem here is one of scope. Your curly brackets define the scope as everything inside the 'switch' statement. This means that you are left with a scope where a jump will be performed further into the code skipping the initialization. The correct way to handle this is to define a scope specific to that case statement and define your variable within it.

switch (val)
{
case VAL:
{
// This will work
int newVal = 42;
break;
}
case ANOTHER_VAL:
...
break;
}