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Date: 12 Mar 88 11:26:02 GMT
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Subject:  Re: Don't use Scanf()

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Date:         Fri, 11 Mar 88 02:36:59 GMT
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From:         Roland McGrath <rk9005@cca.ucsf.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Don't use Scanf()
Comments: To: info-c@brl-smoke.arpa
To:           Vic Kapella <SXJVK@ALASKA>

One real stupidity I've seen many, many times is the
over-use of printf.  The printf functions have their uses,
and they do their job quite well, but please know what these
uses are!!

For example:
    printf("Hello world!\n");
Haven't you ever heard of puts????
    puts("Hello world!");    /* note the newline is appended    */
or
    printf("hi");
try fputs:
    fputs("hi", stdout);    /* no newline appended    */
What's that?  Oh, now you have to include <stdio.h> so
you can get the proper declarations of all these functions anyway?
Poor baby!

And the ultimate stupidity:
    printf("\n");
Get a brain!!!!!  You're using the function that can do complex
data formatted output to write one bleeping character!!!!!
Try
    putchar('\n');
If you include <stdio.h>, this will probably end up being a macro
that will write it out very fast.

I have even seen:
    sprintf(buf, "constant string");
Hey, Mr. Power-Programmer, ever heard of strcpy????


In general, if there's no format spec, don't use printf!!!!!!
--
    Roland McGrath
ARPA: roland@rtsg.lbl.gov roland@lbl-rtsg.arpa
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!lbl-rtsg.arpa!roland