Why does Try-Catch require curly braces

Consider the fact that there are really three (or more) code blocks in play here:

try {}
catch (myexcption)
{}
catch (myotherexception)
{}
finally
{}

Keep in mind that these are in the scope of a larger context and the exceptions not caught are potentually caught further up the stack.

Note that this is basically the same thing as a class construct that also has the {} structure.

Say for instance you might have:

try
try
if (iAmnotsane)
beatMe(please);
catch (Exception myexception)
catch (myotherexception)
logerror("howdy")
finally

NOW does that second catch belong to the first or the second try? What about the finally? SO you see the optional/multiple portions make the requirement.

UPDATE: This question was the subject of my blog on December 4th, 2012. There are a number of insightful comments on the blog that you might also be interested in. Thanks for the great question!

As others have noted, the proposed feature introduces ambiguities that are confusing. I was interested to see if there were any other justifications for the decision to not support the feature, so I checked the language design notes archive.

I see nothing in the language design notes archive that justifies this decision. As far as I know, C# does it that way because that's how other languages with similar syntax do it, and they do it that way because of the ambiguity problem.

I did learn something interesting though. In the initial design of C# there was no try-catch-finally! If you wanted a try with a catch and a finally then you had to write:

try
{
  try
  {
      XYZ();
  }
  catch(whatever)
  {
     DEF();
  }
}
finally
{
  ABC();
}

which, not surprisingly, is exactly how the compiler analyzes try-catch-finally; it just breaks it up into try-catch inside try-finally upon initial analysis and pretends that's what you said in the first place.