retiring gets(3)

[John Woods]

In article <660023 at hpclscu.HP.COM>, shankar at hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes:
> > gets() has legitimate uses.  It is in the library Base Document.
> > It is widely used in existing code (sometimes safely, sometimes not).
> > It stays.
> Exactly how do you use gets "safely"?

The only case I can think of is when you have a process that fork()s, and the
parent feeds the child stuff which is guaranteed to fit into the buffer.

I used to think that parsing machine-generated output files was another case.
Then one day my program for analyzing /usr/spool/uucp/SYSLOG started blowing
out because I had run out of space during a uucp transfer...

gets.  A clock-tick of convenience.  A process-lifetime of regret.  :-)
-- 
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, john at frog.UUCP, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw at eddie.mit.edu

Science does not remove the TERROR of the Gods!