Declaring and initializing a variable in a Conditional or Control statement in C++

Question

In Stroustrup\'s The C++ Programming Language: Special Edition (3rd Ed), Stroustrup writes that the declaration and initialization of variables in the conditionals

Answer 1

I've run into a similar problem:

The problem seems to be the parentheses around the int declaration. It should work if you can express the assignment and test without them, i.e.

if (int i = read(socket)) {

should work, but that means the test is != 0, which is not what you want.