Yeah, they do complicate things, but you can't really do much at all without them in C...
I think I'm on the right track now thanks to you guys.
One more question; If there is only one statement to execute in the for loop, are the braces around that statement still required?
Nope. I tend to use them because they save rearranging stuff if I need them later. Also, if your editor doesn't auto-indent, omitting them can be a recipe for disaster, but the ones I use all do.
The technical explanation is that the contents of the loop is just
one statement and no braces, and the braces and their own contents count collectively as one statement. You can also use them on their own, but that's not very useful.