Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: retiring gets(3)
Message-ID: <675@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 14 Nov 88 09:49:03 GMT
References: <1988Nov8.054845.23998@utstat.uucp> <7963@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 20

In article <7963@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> scs@adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit) writes:
>In article <1988Nov8.054845.23998@utstat.uucp> geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) writes:
>>...gets is a bug waiting to happen and should be stamped out.
>
>Getting rid of gets is an excellent idea.  I'm all for backwards
>compatibility and not breaking existing code, but it's got to be
>conscientiously written existing code, and to my way of thinking
>no reasonable program should ever have been using gets.
>(Apologies and condolences to those of you who do, and to the
>original implementor.)

When I am writing a program for my own use to process my own data
sets which I _know_ have reasonable lines, why the d---l shouldn't
I use gets()?  If I am writing a program for _other_ people to use,
I have an obligation to try to make it reasonably robust, but a lot
of my C programs are there for a day (I find it easier to write C
than awk, better debugging tools to start with... -- would a lint
for awk be called lawk?).

I have just posted a "safe gets" to comp.sources.misc.