{ } for no reason?

[iffo]

Hi,

It is rather dumb question, I am checking someone's code, there are opening and closing {} with out any if statmnent, Is there a reason I don't understand thats thye are there or just by mistake?, they do not give any syntax error though

                          $this->stage = 1;
		//Affiliate id changes
		{
			if($this->lead->affiliate_id == 1167)
			{
				$this->lead->affiliate_id = 1657;
				$_REQUEST['lead']['affiliate_id'] = 1657;
			}
		}

[kyberfabrikken]

It's valid syntax, but it makes no real difference. It can be used to show that a certain piece of code is a unit, but this is purely semantical - eg. for making the code easier to read. It may also be that there used to be a control statement of some kind, which have now been removed.
In C (Which PHP is modelled over), a block has it's own variable scope, but PHP doesn't inherit this feature.
Here's an example, showing block scope in C :
http://icecube.wisc.edu/~dglo/c_class/scope.html

int a;

void f(void)
{
	float a;	/* different from global `a' */
	float b;

	a = 0.0;	/* sets `a' declared in this block to 0.0 */
			/* global `a' is untouched */
	{
		int a;	/* new `a' variable */

		a = 2;	/* outer `a' is still set to 0.0 */
	}
	b = a;		/* sets `b' to 0.0 */
}

/* global `a' is untouched by anything done in f() */