The compound statement

The simplest control structure is a compound statement.

This is a list of statements enclosed within curly braces ('{' and '}'):

{
        x = 1;
        y = 2;
}

Although this may not seem very significant, it plays a crucial role in building more complicated control structures. Many control structures expect a single statement as their body. By using a compound statement, the same control structure can be used to control multiple statements.