retiring gets(3)

[Henry Spencer]

In article <22402 at watmath.waterloo.edu> atbowler at watmath.waterloo.edu (Alan T. Bowler [SDG]) writes:
>... As long as
>gets() is in the an official ANSI standard, it will be in a the validation
>suites.  Part of the boiler plate used in sales contracts to the
>the US government is that the compiler must be an officially
>validated compiler...

It is not necessary for a vendor to give up validation-suite compliance for
the sake of discouraging use of gets().  How a compiler is invoked is
compiler-specific in any case; putting gets() in a separate library and
requiring that it be explicitly included (e.g. with "-lunsafe") retains
compliance (and the ability to compile broken old programs) while still
pushing in the right direction.
-- 
Sendmail is a bug,             |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
not a feature.                 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu