[thaumaturgy]

> Would you ditch switch-cases in favor of if-else chains

No. You're talking about applying style rules for if-else conditionals to statements which aren't if-else, which isn't what I was talking about.

This is why the Linux kernel style guide, OpenBSD style, PSR, etc. all have separate guidelines for switch-case along with guidelines for mandatory bracing in if-else.

> Would you ditch "for (int i = 0; ..." in favor of "int i; for (i = 0; ..."?

There isn't a clear-cut rule about this convention in style guides. That's probably in part because the behavior in your two examples is different: in the first case (in C++), i only exists within the scope of the for loop, whereas in the latter case it will continue to exist outside the scope of the for loop.

Whichever one is appropriate would probably depend on context that's outside the scope of a style guide. They're called style guides, after all, not Programming Rules of Law. :-)