Terminology definition - Scope in C application

Question

Is there a specific term for the following type of C code? In my example, I want to increase the depth of scope for a small chunk of code within a function without having to

Answer 1

I'd say you are introducing a new local scope, or a nested scope, or a block.

This becomes seriously important in C++ when you take active advantage of this:

{
    std::lock_guard lk(my_mutex);

    do_critical_stuff();  // might throw exception?
}
// the lock is released automagically!

But even in C it's good practice to only use variables locally where they're needed and not bleed them into unnecessarily wide scopes.