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by rer0tsaz 3968 days ago
> Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.

gets was deprecated in C99 and removed in C11.
3 comments
rgbrenner 3968 days ago
C11 is about 6 years newer than the article. So the article was accurate at the time it was written.
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rlongstaff 3968 days ago
... but what percentage of current C code is C11. More importantly, how much new code is written according to C11?
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Gibbon1 3967 days ago
But gets() isn't just one unsafe function all of the classic string functions are totally unsafe, and most of their safer replacements are similarly bad. They do things like take buffer size and then will truncate strings and leave off the terminating zero. So then the next string function will blow up.

I think really when people manipulate strings in c/c++ they use the safe functions that come with frameworks.

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