VB.NET equivalent of {} nesting

Answer 1

No, VB.Net has no such blanket scoping modifiers. You can simulate them by using an empty loop like the following.

Loop
  ...
Until False

However it will still not permit you to redefine a variable with the same name. In VB.Net (and C#) it is not legal to define a variable in a nested scope with the same name as a variable in an outer scope.

Answer 2

You can use an empty With block:

With Nothing

    Dim x = 1

    Console.WriteLine("X = " + x.ToString())

End With

' ERROR! x is out of scope at this point. '
Console.WriteLine(x)

Since With is only a syntactic sugar it might be better than using looping statements.