The Java Language Specification, Third Edition

CHAPTER14
Blocks and Statements
He was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.
On Pitt’s First Speech
THE sequence of execution of a program is controlled by statements, which are
executed for their effect and do not have values.
Some statements contain other statements as part of their structure; such other
statements are substatements of the statement. We say that statement S
immediately contains statement U if there is no statement T different from S and U
such that S contains T and T contains U. In the same manner, some statements
contain expressions (§15) as part of their structure.
The first section of this chapter discusses the distinction between normal and
abrupt completion of statements (§14.1). Most of the remaining sections explain
the various kinds of statements, describing in detail both their normal behavior
and any special treatment of abrupt completion.
Blocks are explained first (§14.2), followed by local class declarations (§14.3)
and local variable declaration statements (§14.4).
Next a grammatical maneuver that sidesteps the familiar “dangling else”
problem (§14.5) is explained.
The last section (§14.21) of this chapter addresses the requirement that every
statement be reachable in a certain technical sense.
DRAFT
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