gets is not too dangerous

[Michael Eager]

Michael Eager wrote:
> Miguel Angel Champin Catalan wrote:
>> Hello:
>>
>> We are students of computer sciences in the Santa Maria University, 
>> Chile. We just want to know if the function "gets" it's too dangerous 
>> for a warning. The fact is that our teacher's assistant give us a 
>> homework, and one restriction was to use gcc to compile our code, 
>> without warnings.
>> We ask you for a simple explanation (if it's possible) about our 
>> warning, telling that "gets" is not too dangerous, because in our 
>> case, works perfectly, under some restrictions obviously.
> 
> Instead of using gets(), use fgets().  It's similar in function
> and easy to use, but doesn't permit overwriting the input buffer.
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^
                                       overrunning
> 
> As a university student, I would hope that you would want to
> learn the best way to do a task.  Your teacher's assistant
> seems to be encouraging you to use best practices.  The difference
> between poor practice and good practice usually comes down to that
> poor practice "works perfectly, in our case, under some restrictions",
> while good practice just "works perfectly".
> 


-- 
Michael Eager	 eager@eagercon.com
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