There's noting wrong with the code in post #1. Since whitespace is not relevant to C, there is no functional difference between the original code and what you posted in post #2.

While compilers often make extensions available, and while some aspects of standard C are implementation-defined, there is nothing in the OP's code that falls into either category.

The simplest and most likely explanation is that the OP did not post the code that generated the message. Perhaps a slight difference went unnoticed and was lost during debugging.

Moving int i; up a line, to create a pre-ANSI function definition, causes gcc 4.1.2 to produce an identical message.

Regards,
Alister