Why do C programmers often declare the "counter" variable outside the for loop condition:

Question

I am new to C, and I presume that it makes no difference no matter how one does it, but I've noticed that in most examples for loops in see are written like in the following example:

int i;
for(i = 0; i < 10; i++){
   //some code
}

Rather then how I've initially been introduced to for loops in Java:

for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++){
    //some code
}

Is there any reason behind this in C?

Answer 1

1. Old c standards didn't allow to declare variables in the for and thus many programmers are used to it, and others simply are restricted to pre C99(c99) standard.

   But young c programmers like myself would write for (int counter ..., often even constructs like

    for (int index = 0; string[index] != '\0'; ++index) ...
   

2. Sometimes, it's just because the algorithm requries it. For instance if you need to know what the last value of index was in the example construct above. Which is a common way to traverse string characters.