gets

gets

Read a String from the Standard Input Stream

Portability: ISO/ANSI C conforming, UNIX compatible

SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE
IMPLEMENTATION
EXAMPLE
RELATED FUNCTIONS
SEE ALSO

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>

char *gets(char *str);

DESCRIPTION

gets reads a line of data from the stream stdin and stores the data in the area addressed by str . The gets function terminates the input line with a null character.

Note: Although many of the code examples in this book use gets , this function should not be used in production code. gets was used to keep the SAS/C examples as simple as possible. [cautionend]

RETURN VALUE

gets returns str . If no characters are read due to end of file or if an error occurs during the read, 0 is returned.

IMPLEMENTATION

gets(str) is approximately equivalent to the following, except that the new-line character that terminates the input line is not stored:

fgets(str, INFINITY, stdin)

Because there is no upper bound to the number of characters read, gets may store into memory beyond the bounds of str . Therefore, for safety, other functions should be considered instead of gets .

EXAMPLE

#include <stdio.h>

#define MAXLINE 80
#define SAFETY 40

main()
{
   char line[MAXLINE + SAFETY];

   for (;;){

       /* Instruct user to type up to MAXLINE characters. To  */
       /*  end the program, enter EOF at the input prompt.    */
    printf("Enter a line of data (to %d characters)\n",MAXLINE);

       /* Read data into str from stdin. */
    if (gets(line)){
         /* Write string to stdout; check for error. */
      if (puts(line) == EOF) break;
    }
    else break;
   }
}

RELATED FUNCTIONS

fgets