C++, like Pascal, breaks instructions up into blocks called functions. When a program is first run, a function named "main" is executed. One big difference between Pascal and C++ is how functions are defined. Take a look at this very small program:

void main(void)
{

}

Let's go over each part. The first line, "void main(void)", is the function heading. This is the equivalent of saying "procedure main;" in Pascal. Note that there's no semicolon in the C++ version; this is because what must come immediately after main is an instruction. Of course, one instruction is not nearly enough, so we can define a block and put as many instructions as we want in it.

In the above example, the block is the area between the { and the }. The { and } are C++'s equivalents of Pascal's Begin and End -- In fact, they are nearly identical. As with Pascal, you can use the { and } to fill in as many lines as we want and have them used as one big instruction. You've probably done this with a for loop before; the for loops only want one instruction to follow it, but if you used begin and end, you could put as many instructions in the loop as you wanted.