Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!geaclib!daveb
From: daveb@geaclib.UUCP (David Collier-Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: retiring gets(3)
Message-ID: <3449@geaclib.UUCP>
Date: 27 Nov 88 03:15:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: geaclib.3449
References: <22402@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Organization: GEAC Computers, Toronto, CANADA
Lines: 25

> In article <1988Nov8.054845.23998@utstat.uucp> geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) writes:
>>If your vendor protests your reasonable request, point out that gets,
>>as part of stdio, is a decade-old backward compatibility hack for
>>compatibility with the Sixth Edition UNIX Portable I/O Library, which
>>was utterly replaced by stdio no later than 1979.  

From article <22402@watmath.waterloo.edu>, by atbowler@watmath.waterloo.edu (Alan T. Bowler [SDG]):
> While the vendor may sympathize with the reasoning, the mechanics
> of the the US Federal bureaucracy work against this.  As long as
> gets() is in the an official ANSI standard, it will be in a the validation
> suites.

  (Hi, Allan!)
  This raises the interesting, and possibly invidious, question of
why the ANSI C standard includes gets...  It may prove advisable to
ask for its elimination on the next (NOT! current) round of
standardization, and a request from the (U.S) DOD Computer Security
Center (sic) for an exception in the validation suite...

--dave
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  | yunexus!lethe!dave
 Interleaf Canada Inc. |
 1550 Enterprise Rd.   | HE's so smart he's dumb.
 Mississauga, Ontario  |       --Joyce C-B