Semicolon at end of 'if' statement

Question

Today, after half an hour of searching for a bug, I discovered that it is possible to put a semicolon after an if statement instead of code, like this:

if(a          


        

Answer 1

I'd agree with you there's no useful purpose to this for a human. I suspect it's there because it simplifies the language definition; it means that the thing that comes after an if is e same as the thing that comes after a while, for instance.