Is it good practice to separate code into blocks?

Question

If I have a method that does multiple, related things, is it good practice to stick each "thing" that the method does into a seperate block?

Ex.

{
int var
//Code
}

{
int var
//More Code
}

It would help reduce the number of local variables, and make the code more readable, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

Answer 1

If your function does multiple things that are lengthy enough that you would consider splitting those things into blocks like this, then you should probably split the function into multiple, smaller functions.

There are, of course, scenarios in which introducing a new scope block is useful. For example, if you use a scoped_lock of some kind to lock a mutex or other synchronization object, you can ensure that you only hold the lock for as short a time as necessary by introducing a scope block.

Answer 2

Implementation Patterns by Kent Beck has a very good chapter on this topic. Splitting into blocks will help in refactoring into separate functions.

For example something like this

void process() { 
 //code for input 
 //code for increments /tally 
 //code to populate objects and output 
}

will become

void process() {
  input();
  tally();
  output();
}