Out of scope and a function

["DC A" <adc4444 hotmail com>]

Hi! I'm having trouble explaining a code. My application has a top window 
which
contains a GtkList widget. I 've also created a 
function(fill_list_with_items())
which populates the clist widget.


GList *fill_list_with_items(GtkWidget *list)
{  int i;
  GList *list_items;
  list_items = NULL;
  for(i = 1; i <= 50; i++)
  {
     list_items = g_list_prepend(list_items,
           populate_row(list, i));
  }
  list_items = g_list_reverse(list_items);

  gtk_list_append_items(GTK_LIST(list), list_items);
  return list_items;
}


populate_row() function create GtkListItem for each row and populate with 
vbox which
contains a GtkLabel widget. My question is: in the above code GList 
*list_items
does not exist beyond the function fill_list_with_items(). So how come the 
compiler
doesn not complain about it of getting out of scope?

Thanks.

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