local scope in Java

Question

Why is it that curly braces do not define a separate local scope in Java? I was expecting this to be a feature common to the main curly brace languages (C, C++, Java, C#).<

Answer 1

Blocks define a local scope, but don't allow you to redefine a variable with the same name as another variable in an outer local scope. If it did, there would be no way to access the "hidden" variable.