Pro/con: Initializing a variable in a conditional statement

Question

In C++ you can initialize a variable in an if statement, like so:

if (CThing* pThing = GetThing())
{
}

Why would one consider this bad or g

Answer 1

also notice that if you're writing C++ code you want to make the compiler warning about "=" in a conditional statement (that isn't part of a declaration) an error.