Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: retiring gets(3)
Message-ID: <1988Nov13.005734.23207@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1988Nov8.054845.23998@utstat.uucp> <8841@smoke.BRL.MIL> <6927@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 88 00:57:34 GMT

In article <6927@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>... Is everyone really
>going to write their own safe versions of scanf() and sprintf()?  I always
>wondered why the standard library versions have no way to control the
>size of the output - maybe real programers like core dumps?

ANSI C came within a hairsbreadth of including a length-limited sprintf.
(There are length-limiting provisions in scanf, if you read the manual.)
If there had been any prior experience with it, it probably would have
made it.  Sigh.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu