retiring gets(3)

[Henry Spencer]

I won't do a point-by-point rebuttal of Doug's long posting, partly
because this is obviously a semi-religious issue.  I will content myself
with observing that saying "it's all just a matter of coding style"
ignores the fact that there are objective differences between coding
styles:  some *are* better than others.  Many people, notably including
those at a certain Bell Labs site of some historical significance, seem
to agree with Geoff and me that gets() is an error-prone and unnecessary
function whose use should be firmly discouraged.  This would not magically
solve all our problems, but it would eliminate one superfluous sharp edge
from widely-used software.
-- 
SunOSish, adj:  requiring      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
32-bit bug numbers.            | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu