Statements (GNU C Language Manual)

19 Statements

A statement specifies computations to be done for effect; it does not produce a value, as an expression would. In general a statement ends with a semicolon (‘;’), but blocks (which are statements, more or less) are an exception to that rule. See Blocks.

The places to use statements are inside a block, and inside a complex statement. A complex statement contains one or two components that are nested statements. Each such component must consist of one and only one statement. The way to put multiple statements in such a component is to group them into a block (see Blocks), which counts as one statement.

The following sections describe the various kinds of statement.

• Expression Statement		Evaluate an expression, as a statement, usually done for a side effect.
• if Statement		Basic conditional execution.
• if-else Statement		Multiple branches for conditional execution.
• Blocks		Grouping multiple statements together.
• return Statement		Return a value from a function.
• Loop Statements		Repeatedly executing a statement or block.
• switch Statement		Multi-way conditional choices.
• switch Example		A plausible example of using `switch`.
• Duffs Device		A special way to use `switch`.
• Case Ranges		Ranges of values for `switch` cases.
• Null Statement		A statement that does nothing.
• goto Statement		Jump to another point in the source code, identified by a label.
• Local Labels		Labels with limited scope.
• Labels as Values		Getting the address of a label.
• Statement Exprs		A series of statements used as an expression.