🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <40fn05$686@kruuna.helsinki.fi> wirzeniu@cc.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) writes:
>A.Main@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Zefram):
>> In any case, there's nothing wrong with using gets()
>> in certain limited cases, even in production code.  

>It would be nice to hear some examples.  For what it's worth, I don't
>consider it sufficient to say that you write both the writer and the
>reader: IMHO the program _must_ check the line length anyway (to avoid
>the obvious and frequent bug where you or the poor user update only the
>writer to use longer lines), and that can't be done with gets.

While I'm certainly not a fan of gets(), I disagree with your claim that it
shouldn't even be used when both the writer and reader are developed in
conjunction.  By your logic, strcpy() also should never be used, because
someone might lengthen the source variable and forget to lengthen the
destination variable.

However, since gets() reads from stdin, it's very easy for users to arrange
to feed it input from some other source than the matching writing
application, so it's usually a disaster waiting to happen.
-- 
Barry Margolin
BBN PlaNET Corporation, Cambridge, MA
barmar@bbnplanet.com
Phone (617) 873-3126 - Fax (617) 873-5124