Switch statements and instance variable allocation in Objective-C

Question

I seem to be having a problem creating new local variables inside a switch statement. I thought it was something in my class headers, but was even getting errors trying to allocate a new NSObject. Here's my syntax:

-(NSArray *)charactersFromChapter:(NSInteger)number {
    NSObject *noError = [[NSObject alloc] init];
    //line above does not cause error
    NSArray *characters;
    switch (number) {
        case 1:
            NSObject *obj = [[NSObject alloc] init];
            //error happens in line above (Expected expression)
            characters = [NSArray arrayWithObject:obj];
            break;
        case 2:

            break;
        case 3:

            break;
    }
    return characters;
}

Answer 1

In a switch statement, you cannot initialize variables without setting a scope first, so to fix it, do something like this:

switch (some_expression) {
   case case_1:
   { // notice the brackets
       id some_obj = [MyObj new];
       break;
   }
   default:
       break; 
}