Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: gets(3) nonsense
Message-ID: <453@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 15 Nov 88 17:27:22 GMT
References: <867@cernvax.UUCP> <645@quintus.UUCP> <339@igor.Rational.COM> <14447@mimsy.UUCP> <1643@solo11.cs.vu.nl> <434@auspex.UUCP> <1657@solo11.cs.vu.nl>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 26

>\"Intended" in what sense?  Somebody put it in there so that people would
>\deliberately write programs using it, and thus would write programs that
>\could be made to fail by sending them lines longer than they expect? 
>
>Hey people! I just found out somebody put a nasty little program in /bin!
>It's called `rm'. If you type `rm *', all your files will disappear!

You've totally missed the point.

Somebody might want all the files in a given directory to disappear.  I
have difficulty imagining anybody who *wants* to write a program that
blows up when you feed too-long lines at it.

>\Or somebody put it in there so that you could avoid the nasty run-time
>\overhead of checking string bounds?
>
>Of course!

"Of course somebody put it in so you can avoide string bounds checking?"
I dispute this.  Got any references handy to prove your assertion?

>If you want security, use fgets()!

I want security.  I want everyone *else* to want security.  I don't want
programs that die randomly if they get handed lines that are too long. 
Programs like that are rude.