Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: retiring gets(3)
Message-ID: <435@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 11 Nov 88 17:51:14 GMT
References: <1988Nov8.054845.23998@utstat.uucp> <8841@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2566@ihlpm.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 12

>What's to prevent the following...

Nothing, other than intelligence on the part of the programmer. 
However, unless your application can guarantee that the input will
*never* have overly-long lines (or can hand a buffer *so* immense to
"gets" that it won't matter - but consider how big a buffer might well
have to be), there's nothing to prevent a blowup in a program using
"gets()".

I don't know that I'd argue that "gets()" should be removed, especially
since it's in the dpANS.  I would, however, argue that it should *never*
be used.