Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: retiring gets(3) Message-ID: <1988Nov29.203133.26313@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <1988Nov8.054845.23998@utstat.uucp> <22402@watmath.waterloo.edu> <1988Nov27.005945.29173@utzoo.uucp> <8988@smoke.BRL.MIL> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 88 20:31:33 GMT 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@zoo.toronto.edu